Quotes About Emotions

There are several different kinds of painful feelings that we might experience, and learning to distinguish and relate to these feelings of discomfort or pain is an important part of meditation practice, because it is one of the very first things that we open to as our practice develops.

True maturation on the spiritual path requires that we discover the depth of our wounds. As Achaan Chah put it, "If you haven't cried a number of times, your meditation hasn't really begun." A

most often the kinds of pains we encounter in meditative attention are not indications of physical problems. They are the painful, physical manifestations of our emotional, psychological, and spiritual holdings and contractions.

Almost always the roots of anger are in one of two difficult states, which arise just before the anger appears. We become angry either when we are hurt and in pain or when we are afraid. Pay attention to your own life and see if this is true. The next time anger and irritation spring up, see if just before they arose you felt fear or hurt. If you pay attention to the fear or pain first, does the anger even appear? Anger

You may have heard of "out-of-the-body experiences," full of lights and visions. A true spiritual path demands something more challenging, what could be called an "in-the-body experience." We must connect to our body, to our feelings, to our life just now, if we are to awaken.

We grieve for our past traumas and present fears, for all of the feelings we never dared experience consciously.

If we learn to be aware of feelings without grasping or aversion, then they can move through us like changing weather, adn we can be free to feel them and move on like the wind.

we give so much attention to our protective layers of fear, depression, confusion, and aggression that we forget who we really are.

Then one day you will be sitting and fear will arise, and you will feel it and recognize it and think, "Oh, this is fear, I recognize you. Welcome back." Then it is as if the fear becomes one of your friends.

Fear the assassin who waits in the lonely passages of the heart. —Teri Kilborn, Broken Fences           She

Early on, if I was alone two three nights in a row, I'd start writing poems about suicide.

It's a slight stretch of the imagination but most people are alike in most ways so I've never had any trouble identifying with the character that I'm playing.

Well, a girlfriend once told me never to fight with anybody you don't love.

There were points in my life where I felt oddly irresistible to women. I'm not in that state now and that makes me sad.

I think that's what distinguishes Schmidt, really. In the movies now, so much of what is appealing to an audience is the dramatic or has to do with science fiction, and Schmidt is simply human. There's no melodrama there's no device, It's just about a human being.

Early on, if I was alone two or three nights in a row, I'd start writing poems about suicide.

She wondered why he hadn't come after her. How many men would let their wives walk out of a restaurant late at night and not give a damn where they went ? She wished she could stop thinking

We all need ways to express ourselves, and poetry is one of mine.

Children seem naturally drawn to poetry - it's some combination of the rhyme, rhythm, and the words themselves.

Poetry seems to sink into us the way prose doesn't. I can still quote verses I learned when I was very young, but I have trouble remembering one line of a novel I just finished reading.

Silver threads and golden needles cannot mend this heart of mine.

You Russians like to think you're poets but perhaps you're just touchy.

The English department of the spirit—that great quagmire that lurks at the bottom of all of us.

The first key to leadership was self-control, particularly the mastery of pride, which was something more difficult, he explained, to subdue than a wild lion and anger, which was more difficult to defeat than the greatest wrestler. He warned them that "if you can't swallow your pride, you can't lead.