#it

Reading is a sage way to bump up against life. Reading may be an escape, but it is not an escape from my own life and problems.  It is an escape from the narrow boundaries of being only me. Reading in some wonderful ways helps me find out who I am. When she was a young girl Patricia MacLachlan's mother encouraged her to "read a book and find out who you are." And it is true that in some ways reading defines me as it refines me. Reading enlarges my vision of the world; it helps me understand someone who is different from me. It makes me bigger on the inside. We tend to see the world from our own perspective; it is good to see it from the eyes of others. Good literature helps me understand who I am in relation to what others experience. Far from being an escape from reality, good literature is a window into reality. I read to feel life. ↗

— Gladys Hunt

#perspective #reading #reality #experience

I want to give you a simple tool to help. Whenever you want to take a minute to experience the immense power of being present in the moment, do the simple exercise of breathing, and concentrate just for one minute, only one minute, on your breath. This breath is what connects you life, to the world via air, fills you with inhalation, but really gives you the door to inspiration, the door to the quiet mind, the door to the hidden path, the door to the answers you seek." - Inshan Meahjohn, from the Hidden Path.

— Inshan Meahjohn

#breathing #inspirational #love #meditation #mindfulness

... in moments of crisis our thoughts do not run consecutively but rather sweep over us in waves or intuition and experience ... ↗

— John le Carré

#experience #intuition #thinking #experience

The old concept of chronological, orderly, symmetrical development of character died when it was discovered that the unconscious motivations are entirely at odds with fabricated conventions. Human beings do not grow in perfect symmetry. They oscillate, expand, contract, backtrack, arrest themselves, retrogress, mobilize, atrophy in part, proceed erratically according to experience and traumas. Some aspects of the personality mature, others do not. Some live in the past, some in the present. Some people are futuristic characters, some are cubistic, some are hard-edged, some geometric, some abstract, some impressionistic, some surrealistic! ↗

— Anaïs Nin

#experience

What you end up experiencing is really a personal presentation of the world according to you, rather than the stark, unfiltered experience of what is really out there. This mental manipulation of the outer experience allows you to buffer reality as it comes in. ↗

— Michael Singer

#mental #reality #experience

I have been driven many times upon my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had no where else to go. My own wisdom and that of all about me seemed insufficient for that day. ↗

— Abraham Lincoln

#humility #prayer #surrender #faith

I'm not ambitious for a splendid fortune, a fashionable position, or a great name for my girls. If rank and money come with love and virtue also, I should accept them gratefully, and enjoy your good fortune; but I know, by experience, how much genuine happiness can be had in a plain little house, where the daily bread is earned, and some privations give sweetness to the few pleasures. ↗

— Louisa M Alcott

#experience

Love meant jumping off a cliff and trusting that a certain person would be there to catch you at the bottom. ↗

— Jodi Picoult

#love #trust #faith

Depression isn't a bad word...but it can destroy. We must have hope we can save many...We must keep the faith that we can try to help all! ↗

— Timothy Pina

#inspirational #faith

Cheryl's growing awareness of her emotional difficulties was leading her to research multiple personality. As she had learned more about dissociation, she realised just how severe the abuse had been and how much she had been hurt. Her mind had dissociated to assure survival during the abuse by her father and it had been forced to dissociate by various researchers in government programmes. ↗

— Cheryl Hersha

#child-abuse #child-rape #dissociation #dissociative #dissociative-identity-disorder