Quotes About Acceptance

I knew I could not cope with the future unless I was able to rediscover the past.

I ask myself: Would I have been any worse off if I had stayed home or lived on a farm instead of shock treatments and medication?

People don't want other people to be people.

That we are capable only of being what we are remains our unforgivable sin.

I rejoiced in the flaws that made her more real to me

We choose--or choose not--to be alone when we decide whom we will accept as our fellows, and whom we will reject. Thus an eremite in a mountain is in company, because the birds and coneys, the initiates whose words live in his 'forest books,' and the winds--the messengers of the Increate--are his companions. Another man, living in the midst of millions, may be alone, because there are none but enemies and victims around him.

hell is wanting to be somewhere different from where you are. Being one place and wanting to be somewhere else . . . . Wanting life to be different from what it is. That's also called leaving without leaving. Dying before you die. It's as if there is a part of you that so rails against being shattered by love that you shatter yourself first. (p. 44)

It's never been true, not anywhere at any time, that the value of a soul, of a human spirit, is dependent on a number on a scale. We are unrepeatable beings of light and space and water who need these physical vehicles to get around. When we start defining ourselves by that which can be measured or weighed, something deep within us rebels. We don't want to EAT hot fudge sundaes as much as we want our lives to BE hot fudge sundaes. We want to come home to ourselves. (p. 174-5)

Imagine not being frightened by any feeling. Imagine knowing that nothing will destroy you. That you are beyond any feeling, an state. Bigger than. Vaster than. That there is no reason to use drugs because anything a drug could do would pale in comparison to knowing who you are. To what you can understand, live, be, just by being with that presents itself to you in the form of the feelings you have...

Most of us spend our lives protecting ourselves from losses that have already happened.

Treat yourself as if you already are enough. Walk as if you are enough. Eat as if you are enough. See, look, listen as if you are enough. Because it's true.

Most of our suffering comes from resisting what is already here, particularly our feelings. All any feeling wants is to be welcomed, touched, allowed. It wants attention. It wants kindness. If you treated your feelings with as much love as you treated your dog or your cat or your child, you'd feel as if you were living in heaven every day of your sweet life.

For some reason, we are truly convinced that if we criticize ourselves, the criticism will lead to change. If we are harsh, we believe we will end up being kind. If we shame ourselves, we believe we end up loving ourselves. It has never been true, not for a moment, that shame leads to love. Only love leads to love.

Staying requires being curious about who you actually are when you don't take yourself to be a collection of memories.When you don't infer your existence form replaying what happened to you, when you don't take yourself to be the girl your mother/father/brother/teacher/lover didn't see or adore. When you sense yourself directly, immediately, right now, without preconception, who are you?

You will never stop wanting more until you allow yourself to have what you already have. To take it in. Savor it. Now is a good time to do that . . .

At some point, it's time to stop fighting with death, my thighs and the way things are. And to realize that emotional eating in nothing but bolting from multiple versions of the above: the obsession will stop when the bolting stops. And at that point, we might answer, as spiritual teacher Catherine Ingram did, when someone asked how she allowed herself to tolerate deep sorrow, "I live among the brokenhearted. They allow it.

do enjoy it when you get optimistically fatalistic,

I work in situations where random events happen. I can't forbid them to happen. I can only make allowances for them and deal with them when they occur.

We've been three people and an octopus all of my life, and now the octopus is gone.

Natalie's not buggy, she just thinks a different way." The words shoot out of me before I can stop them. I know my dad would not like me talking to the warden and Trixle like this. "Is that so?" Trixle asks. "Yes, sir." I nod to the warden. "It is.

Dakota?" Izzy asks. "Am I smart enough to be a nerd?

It doesn't matter that I weigh more than both of them put together. I know when I'm beat. I let Natalie open the door.

I got to a traffic light, and it turned red. I said, "Why me?"

Life is bearable even when it's unbearable: that is what's so terrible, that is the unbearable thing about it.