The wound is the place where the Light enters you.
When your heart is heavy
Grief, sadness, or a weight that won't lift. These lines sit with that. They don't try to fix it.
192 quotes
In the end, just three things matter: how well we lived, how well we loved, how well we learned to let go.
This too shall pass.
He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.
There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.
You can cut all the flowers but you cannot keep spring from coming.
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field. I'll meet you there.
Don't grieve. Anything you lose comes round in another form.
Lovers don't finally meet somewhere. They're in each other all along.
There is a candle in your heart, ready to be kindled.
The only lasting beauty is the beauty of the heart.
Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.
Hatred does not cease by hatred, but only by love; this is the eternal rule.
There is no path to happiness: happiness is the path.
Feelings come and go like clouds in a windy sky. Conscious breathing is my anchor.
People have a hard time letting go of their suffering. Out of a fear of the unknown, they prefer suffering that is familiar.
Waking up this morning, I smile. Twenty-four brand new hours are before me.
When another person makes you suffer, it is because he suffers deeply within himself, and his suffering is spilling over.
Hope is important because it can make the present moment less difficult to bear.
No mud, no lotus.
The seed of suffering in you may be strong, but don't wait until you have no more suffering before allowing yourself to be happy.
Nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know.
Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded. It's a relationship between equals.
We think that the point is to pass the test or to overcome the problem, but the truth is that things don't really get solved. They come together and they fall apart.
When we protect ourselves so we won't feel pain, that protection becomes like armor that imprisons the softness of the heart.
Some changes look negative on the surface but you will soon realize that space is being created in your life for something new to emerge.
The past has no power over the present moment.
Life will give you whatever experience is most helpful for the evolution of your consciousness.
Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don't resist them; that only creates sorrow.
We're all just walking each other home.
Suffering is part of our training program for becoming wise.
Forgiveness is giving up all hope for a better past.
The practice of forgiveness is our most important contribution to the healing of the world.
To bow to the fact of our life's sorrows and betrayals is to accept them; and from this deep gesture we discover that all life is workable.
You hold in your hand an invitation: to remember the transforming power of forgiveness and loving kindness.
Even after all this time the sun never says to the earth, 'You owe me.' Look what happens with a love like that. It lights the whole sky.
Stay close to anything that makes you glad you are alive.
The heart is a thousand-stringed instrument that can only be tuned with love.
What do you want? asks God. To feel your presence. What else? asks God. Nothing else, I say.
Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.
Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars.
The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.
The moon stays bright when it does not avoid the night.
Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me.
The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.
This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.
He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.
Weeping may stay for the night, but rejoicing comes in the morning.
Why, my soul, are you downcast? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God.
My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.
But you, Lord, are a compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness.
As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.
Anxiety weighs down the heart, but a kind word cheers it up.
A cheerful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones.
For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.
Because of the Lord's great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.
The Lord is good, a refuge in times of trouble. He cares for those who trust in him.
There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens.
Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.
I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.
Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one's life for one's friends.
For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.
For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God.
Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer.
May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance.
And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
O son of Kunti, the contact between the senses and the sense objects gives rise to fleeting perceptions of happiness and distress. These are non-permanent, and come and go like the winter and summer seasons. O descendent of Bharat, one must learn to tolerate them without being disturbed.
The soul is neither born, nor does it ever die; nor having once existed, does it ever cease to be. The soul is without birth, eternal, immortal, and ageless. It is not destroyed when the body is destroyed.
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear.
We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.
Only in the darkness can you see the stars.
There is no pit so deep that God's love is not deeper still.
Forgiveness is the key that can unlock the door of resentment and the handcuffs of hatred.
If you look at the world, you'll be distressed. If you look within, you'll be depressed. But if you look at God, you'll be at rest.
All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.
Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness.
Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.
An abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behavior.
Those who have a why to live can bear almost any how.
In some ways suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning.
What is to give light must endure burning.
One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.
Loneliness does not come from having no people about one, but from being unable to communicate the things that seem important to oneself.
Self-hate is the most insidious and the most difficult to discover of all the factors that go into the making of a neurosis.
Acceptance of what has happened is the first step to overcoming the consequences of any misfortune.
The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated.
What is most personal is most universal.
When someone really hears you without passing judgment on you, without trying to take responsibility for you, without trying to mold you, it feels damn good.
I must learn to love the fool in me—the one who feels too much, talks too much, takes too much pleasure, takes too much pain.
If we climb high enough, we will reach a height from which tragedy ceases to look tragic.
To love means to open ourselves to grief, sorrow, and disappointment as well as to joy, fulfillment, and an intensity of consciousness we did not know was possible.
Do not call a man a failure until he has stopped trying.
The beliefs that we hold about ourselves and the world form the core of our emotional reactions.
You feel the way you think.
A poor self-image is the magnifying glass that can transform a trivial mistake or an imperfection into an overwhelming symbol of personal defeat.
Trauma is not what happens to you. Trauma is what happens inside you as a result of what happens to you.
The attempt to escape from pain is what creates more pain.
The question is not why the addiction, but why the pain.
Owning our story can be hard but not nearly as hard as spending our lives running from it.
Talk to yourself like you would to someone you love.
What we don't need in the midst of struggle is shame for being human.
Vulnerability sounds like truth and feels like courage.
We cannot selectively numb emotions. When we numb the painful emotions, we also numb the positive emotions.
Self-compassion is simply giving the same kindness to ourselves that we would give to others.
Self-compassion involves treating yourself with the same kindness, concern, and support you'd show a good friend.
We are not determined by our experiences, but the meaning we give them shapes our future.
Life doesn't make any sense without interdependence. We need each other, and the sooner we learn that, the better for us all.
Love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence.
Depression is the inability to construct a future.
You largely constructed your depression. It wasn't given to you. Therefore, you can deconstruct it.
Of all the virtues we can learn, no trait is more useful, more essential for survival, and more likely to improve the quality of life than the ability to transform adversity into an enjoyable challenge.
The body keeps the score: if the memory of trauma is encoded in the viscera, in heartbreaking and gut-wrenching emotions, in autoimmune disorders and skeletal/muscular problems, it must be addressed in the body.
Being able to feel safe with other people is probably the single most important aspect of mental health.
Trauma victims cannot recover until they become familiar with and befriend the sensations in their bodies.
Trauma is not what happens to us, but what we hold inside in the absence of an empathetic witness.
The paradox of trauma is that it has both the power to destroy and the power to transform and resurrect.
Nobody ever figures out what life is all about, and it doesn't matter.
For small creatures such as we, the vastness is bearable only through love.
The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent.
You cannot hope to build a better world without improving the individuals.
I am one of those who think like Nobel, that humanity will draw more good than evil from new discoveries.
Remember to look up at the stars and not down at your feet.
However difficult life may seem, there is always something you can do and succeed at.
Life would be tragic if it weren't funny.
The past, like the future, is indefinite and exists only as a spectrum of possibilities.
For me, I am driven by two main philosophies: know more today about the world than I did yesterday and lessen the suffering of others.
The love for all living creatures is the most noble attribute of man.
What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.
Only if we understand, can we care. Only if we care, we will help.
The least I can do is speak out for those who cannot speak for themselves.
Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts.
Sometimes even to live is an act of courage.
As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters.
When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive.
Loss is nothing else but change, and change is Nature's delight.
He is a wise man who does not grieve for the things which he has not, but rejoices for those which he has.
Let him who would move the world first move himself.
The hottest love has the coldest end.
Happiness depends upon ourselves.
Hope is a waking dream.
That which does not kill us makes us stronger.
To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.
Invisible threads are the strongest ties.
There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.
Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.
The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays.
In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.
Blessed are the hearts that can bend; they shall never be broken.
Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.
But in the end one needs more courage to live than to kill himself.
Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.
A man with outward courage dares to die; a man with inner courage dares to live.
Have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves.
I put my heart and my soul into my work, and have lost my mind in the process.
Art is to console those who are broken by life.
The artist is a receptacle for emotions that come from all over the place.
Colors, like features, follow the changes of the emotions.
You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them.
Try to be a rainbow in someone's cloud.
The Eskimos had fifty-two names for snow because it was important to them; there ought to be as many for love.
Laughter is the language of the soul.
To feel the love of people whom we love is a fire that feeds our life.
Love is so short, forgetting is so long.
What I have in my heart and soul — must find a way out. That's the reason for music.
Every secret of a writer's soul, every experience of his life, every quality of his mind, is written large in his works.
Works of art are of an infinite loneliness.
Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage.
Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final.
Write hard and clear about what hurts.
We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.
Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.
I paint my own reality.
I never paint dreams or nightmares. I paint my own reality.
There are always flowers for those who want to see them.
Color is a power which directly influences the soul.
The main thing is to be moved, to love, to hope, to tremble, to live.
The piano looks right at me like a friend.
Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash.
There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in.
Ring the bells that still can ring.
Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words.
Tell all the truth but tell it slant.
Beauty is truth, truth beauty—that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
The season of failure is the best time for sowing the seeds of success.
A loving relationship with God is a rare diamond. It is a rare alchemy; it is a kind of magic.
As a person sheds worn-out garments and wears new ones, likewise, at the time of death, the soul casts off its worn-out body and enters a new one.
Even those who are considered the most immoral of all sinners can cross over this ocean of material existence by seating themselves in the boat of divine knowledge.
Always think of Me, be devoted to Me, worship Me, and offer obeisance to Me. Doing so, you will certainly come to Me. This is My pledge to you, for you are very dear to Me.