Quotes by Therapists - Page 6

Our souls yearn for connection with all souls. There are people we think we prefer and others we don’t, but half the time that’s a lie: We tell ourselves the fairy tale of our hatreds out of fear, but we revisit that tale as it suits us. Deep down, we’d love to love and be loved by all.

If you’re living in the present...you only have to deal with what’s actually going on in that moment.

When you use your imagination, it is a bit like putting on night-vision goggles to see forms in the shadows of your head, heart, and spirit.

There are as many life missions as there are people. We are all unique. We are all important.

Guilt is a waste of time unless you learn how to be more loving the next time a similar situation presents itself.

Don't just live your life, set it on fire!

There are marvelous sea creatures whose existences can be viewed only within the deep blue sea, and similarly we all have dear secrets that can be spoken only in the habitat of the heart.

Many partners of addicts have told me they feel bad about themselves for staying in the relationship because of the betrayal they’ve experienced. They imagine that the people who know their past judge them to be stupid for staying with the person who’s caused them so much pain. I often counter this thinking, explaining that leaving may seem quick and easy because they can pretend they’re okay and the problem has disappeared. However, if you leave your relationship, you’ll be stuck with your pain and sorrow without the person you loved to help you sort it out. Why is this true? Because even though it feels as if your pain comes from your partner, it’s actually coming from inside you.

The masculine ideal of perfection creates a hyper-sensitivity to any nuance of imperfection. Any man who commits his life to the perfectionistic ideal of masculinity is going to feel like a failure. The people around him will feel abused and oppressed by him. The only way to do things is his way, the right way, the ideal way. Every man who succeeds at this game will wind up in the same place: Alone in his victory. At the top of the pyramid there’s no room for anyone else.

Even you, the professional helper, often mistaken for the enlightened Guru or Staretz, can become lost in your thoughts that you must be competent without fault. You may become enthralled with your identity as a professional, even the pressures of the culture of mastery that expects you to heal your clients without fail. Never mind all of the variables over which you have no control, it is up to you, according to the canons of mastery, to control the health and well-being of those for whom you provide professional care. This potentiates a furthering alienation between you and your clients. You are at risk to become, if you have not already, the one who does to your clients; to be the one the active subject acting upon the passive and receptive objects, your clients; to be the one in possession of special knowledge, technique and mastery. All of this conspires to coax or coerce you into treating your client as reduced, a mere case. Unawareness to these influences gives you little chance to consider their influence on your practice in the clinical setting, much less give attentive efforts to resist or change them.

Chöd is conventionally and misleadingly seen as analogous to, if not derived from, shamanic initiatory dismemberment visions, as well as dualistic anti-body ascetic practices. Two of the elements most commonly referenced by authors in their "identification" of Chöd and/as shamanism—the dismemberment/sacrifice of the body and "demonology"—are presented in an oversimplistic fashion. In the first instance, the numerous Buddhist precursors for the offering of the body provide ample testimony to the ethical and meritorious status such acts have in the Buddhist imagination. As for the "demonology" of Chöd, one must keep in mind the psychology and philosophy of mind that explicitly undergirds the discourse of Düd [Skt: mārā] in Chöd.

One of the most valuable things we can learn from open sexual lifestyles is that our programming is changeable.

It is pure devotion that consistently, unwaveringly moves us from control to Soul.

We take the most difficult relationship of our childhood... and we MARRY it.

Take a trip to the exotic landscape of your lover’s body.

Where we can get shagged up is the stories we tell ourselves that we rarely share. The stories about how we can’t do something because we aren’t good enough, or smart enough, or capable enough. These stories cause us problems because we often keep them secret, hidden away in some dark closet in our mind, sometimes even from ourselves. And this, my friend, is a problem.

Stories are epically important to how we view and interact in the world around us. We define ourselves, our abilities and even our goals by the stories we believe and share. These stories become part of our personal view of our world.