Quotes About Awareness

Child abuse in all its forms has always been with us and it is still widespread today. But only recently have the victims started realizing what has been done to them and talking to other people about it. Subjects rarely touched on before are moving into the foreground of discussion, a discussion which opens up new perspectives of greater fulfillment in life for very many people.

Individuals who do not want to know their own truth collude in denial with society as a whole, looking for a common enemy on whom to act out their repressed rage. But as the inhabitants of this shrinking planet near the end of the twentieth century, the danger inherent in self-deception is growing exponentially- and we can afford it less than ever. Fortunately, at the same time, we now have the tools we need to truly understand ourselves, as we were and as we are.

A person is not likely to conceive something monstrous if he does not know it somehow or other from experience. We simply tend to refuse to take a child's suffering seriously enough.

What is valid for the individual is also valid for the development of a wider social consciousness. Here, too, the monstrous truth regarding the causes and consequences of child abuse and the way that violence can be bred into human beings cannot be admitted to the consciousness all at once, but must proceed slowly, step by step.

they ward off any kind of accusation from the parents who once maltreated them so severely. They do not know what that treatment has done to them, they do not know how much they have suffered from it. Above all, they do not want to know. They see it as something beneficial, something inflicted on them for their own good. Self-therapy

This new awareness is frequently a result of encounters with feeling individuals who have been lucky enough to grow up surrounded by love and respect, who have had a less troubled childhood, who have experienced pleasure and freedom and have thus been able to lead easier, happier lives.

It is hard enough to recognize lies for what they are if only one person, from whom we anticipate help, insists on maintaining the lie. Inbred tact and our own distress hamper us in contradicting that person. How much more difficult is it, then, to see through lies when everyone around us takes them for the truth, simply because they themselves are victims of such lies. Thus, yesterday's victims become the opinion-makers and power-brokers of tomorrow.

And yet the truth is so essential that its loss exacts a heavy toll, in the form of grave illness.

If I as a helpless child was abused and am not allowed to see this, I will abuse other helpless creatures without realizing what I am doing. I will also refuse to read books on abuse, or I won't want to understand them because, if I did, I would have to feel the tragedy of my childhood and the pain of having been misled at such an early age.

Only if young people are allowed to know exactly what happened and why, if they no longer allow themselves to be deflected in their curiosity and do not fear the truth, can they free themselves from the burden of their forefathers' blindness. Such young people will certainly not condone the production of poisoned gas.

The older we get, the more difficult it is to find other people who can give us the love our parents denied us. But the body's expectations do not slacken with age—quite the contrary! They are merely directed at others, usually our own children and grandchildren. The only way out of this dilemma is to become aware of these mechanisms and to identify the reality of our own childhood by counteracting the processes of repression and denial.

Once the adult self has decided to find out the whole truth about itself, the body feels understood, respected, and protected.

Accordingly, he came to believe that his immediate environment was the world itself.

Consciously experiencing our legitimate emotions is liberating, not just because of the discharge of long-held tensions in the body but above all because it opens our eyes to reality (both past and present) and frees us of lies and illusions

If we suppress them, feelings can indeed hide themselves from the conscious mind, but they frequently resurface in the form of bodily symptoms, which conceal their real content and intensity, making it much more difficult to deal with them than it would be if they were admitted to consciousness.

Even then Katya remained blind to the fact that as an adult she had ways of escaping her dilemma, that she could have separated from her husband.

But a person who is no longer a child and has the courage to mature by wanting to see the truth must be capable of clearly and unequivocally rejecting the cruelty he or she suffered. Only then will he or she refuse to contribute to the success of evil.

The body would become aware of this sooner or later, and no amount of fine-sounding words would be able to deceive it for long.

The contents of the unconscious remain unchanged and timeless. It is only as these contents become conscious that change can begin.

Consciously experiencing one's own victimisation instead of trying to ward it off provides protection against sadism; i.e., the compulsion to torment and humiliate others.

Feelings of helplessness were mingled with long-dammed-up rage against the mother who had not been available to him when he needed her the most. As a result of becoming aware of these feelings, Peter could rid himself of a symptom that had tormented him for a long time; its point was now easy to understand. His relationships to women changed as his compulsion first to conquer and then to desert them disappeared.

An adult can be fully aware of his feelings only if he had caring parents or caregivers. People who were abused and neglected in childhood are missing this capacity and are therefore never overtaken by unexpected emotions. They will admit only those feelings that are accepted and approved by their inner censor, who is their parents' heir. Depression and a sense of inner emptiness are the price they must pay for this control.

The true self cannot communicate because it has remained unconscious, and therefore undeveloped, in its inner prison.

This is the way you look at the poorest details of the world resurfaced, after you've been driving for a long time -- you feel their singleness and precise location and the forlorn coincidence of you being there to see them.