Quotes from Martha N. Beck

You'll never be hurt as much by being open as you have been remaining closed.

It reminds me that we are born innocent but ignorant, and that to remedy the second of these conditions we inevitably surrender the first.

It is a frightening thing to love someone you know the world rejects.

Just like any civilized person, you've spent practically your whole life torturing an innocent wild creature. Starved it, then force-fed it, cut it, cursed it, driven it to exhaustion. Imprisoned it with other creatures who tormented it." "What?" Diana shakes her head in miserable confusion. "I don't even kill spiders! I never wanted to hurt anything." "The innocent wild creature to which I refer, my darling, is you.

In the pursuit of knowledge, every day something is added. In the practice of the Way, every day something is dropped. Less and less do you need to force things, until finally you arrive at non-action. When nothing is done, nothing is left undone.

The urge to find the real facts is destructive only to people or systems (friendships, family dynamics, political dynasties) that are based on lies. The truth can scare you half to death, but it's never as destructive as deception.

A rule for success in today's wild new economic world is this: use the most innovative technologies to deliver the most primal products and services.

Paradoxes haunt the lives of born wayfinders, driving them to seek resolutions to the apparent contradictions in their lives, enticing them into the world that is beyond words and can therefore contain paradox without contradiction.

fear is the raw material from which courage is manufactured.

I remember reading about an NFL receiver who studies yoga so that his limber limbs won't be surprised when they're slammed into strange positions as he plays his full-contact sport. Well, in case you haven't noticed, life is a full-contact sport, at least for the soul.

I am bewildering you a little. Just enough to help you forget what you came to believe, so that you can remember what you've always known.

relinquishing the delusional hope that we can or must be flawless—allows us to seek happiness in the only place it can be found: our real, messy, imperfect experience.

When you find yourself stressed, tense, and veering toward anxiety eating, take a time-out for just three breaths. Long, deep breaths.

The only way to get out of this suicidal pattern is to leave the battlefield by going to the Watcher's place of peace. EXERCISE:

I only put down on paper what works for me, and since I started out as a human train wreck, the ways I've learned to be happy also work for others.

you are the authority figure in your life.

it becomes a problem when we mistake the stories in our minds for The Truth.

Emotions are virtually always responses to thoughts. That's great news, because while it's impossible to control an emotion once a thought has triggered it, we can change our thoughts deliberately. We do this not by contradicting them, but by questioning them. EXPLANATION:

if two people agree on everything, one of them is superfluous.

according to some medical psychologists, it's physiologically impossible for your mind to stay locked in a war of control when you're engaging its ability to generate compassion and appreciation.

You will never realize your best destiny through the avoidance of fear. Rather, you will realize it through the exercise of courage, which means taking whatever action is most liberating to the soul, even when you are afraid.

Stepping back from the Dictator and the Wild Child and becoming the Watcher is like thinking you've been stuck on a railroad track, able to move only backward and forward, and discovering that you had the capacity to fly all along.

to the extent that you're anxious about your weight and struggling against the desire to gorge on wickedly fattening food, you live on a battlefield.

In any situation where our brains perceive extreme threat, the neocortex (the most recently evolved layer of the brain, which performs logical calculation) may be "hijacked" by the deeper, more primitive reptilian layer.