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My sense is that you can never teach anybody anything, or change anybody in ways that they don't already have in mind.

Rachel Naomi Remen

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Rachel Naomi Remen
Age: 86
Born: 1938
Born: February 8
Author
Writer
Mind
Way
Anybody
Never
Already
Ways
Teach
Sense
Change
Anything

More quotes by Rachel Naomi Remen

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Helping, fixing, and serving represent three different ways of seeing life. When you help, you see life as weak. when you fix, you see life as broken. When you serve, you see life as whole. Fixing and helping may be the work of the ego, and service the work of the soul.
Rachel Naomi Remen
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God's presence. . . is an inner experience that never changes. It's a relationship that's there all the time, even when we're not paying attention to it. Perhaps the Infinite holds us to Itself in the same way the earth does. Like gravity, if it ever stopped we would know it instantly. But it never does.
Rachel Naomi Remen
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Sooner or later we will come to the edge of all that we can control and find life, waiting there for us.
Rachel Naomi Remen
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When we are seen by the heart we are seen for who we are. We are valued in our uniqueness by those who are able to see us in this way and we become able to know and value ourselves.
Rachel Naomi Remen
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Every great loss demands that we choose life again. We need to grieve in order to do this. The pain we have not grieved over will always stand between us and life. When we don't grieve, a part of us becomes caught in the past like Lot's wife who, because she looked back, was turned into a pillar of salt.
Rachel Naomi Remen
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Fear is the friction in all transitions.
Rachel Naomi Remen
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Grieving allows us to heal, to remember with love rather than pain. It is a sorting process. One by one you let go of the things that are gone and you mourn for them. One by one you take hold of the things that have become a part of who you are and build again.
Rachel Naomi Remen
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Perhaps losing integrity with yourself is the greatest stress of all, far more hurtful to us than competition, time pressure, or lack of respect. Our vitality is rooted in our integrity. When we do not live in one piece, our life force becomes divided. Becoming separated from our authentic values may weaken us.
Rachel Naomi Remen
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The most basic and powerful way to connect to another person is to listen. Just listen.
Rachel Naomi Remen
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The wisdom in the story of the most educated and powerful person is often not greater than the wisdom in the story of a child, and the life of a child can teach us as much as the life of a sage.
Rachel Naomi Remen
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This simple thing has not been that easy to learn. it certainly went against everything I had been taught since I was very young. I thought people listened only because they were too timid to speak or did not know the answer. A loving silence often has far more power to heal and to connect than the most well intentioned words.
Rachel Naomi Remen
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In order to live fully we may need to look deeply at our own suffering and at the suffering of others. In the depths of every wound we have survived is the strength we need to live. The wisdom our wounds can offer us is a place of refuge. Finding this is not for the faint of heart. But then, neither is life.
Rachel Naomi Remen
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If you carry someone else's fears and live by someone else's values, you may find that you have lived their lives.
Rachel Naomi Remen
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Deep inside, our integrity sings to us whether we are listening or not. It is a note that only we can hear. Eventually, when life makes us ready to listen, it will help us to find our way home.
Rachel Naomi Remen
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The worst thing that happens in life is not death. The worst thing would be to miss it. . . . I think the great danger in life is not showing up.
Rachel Naomi Remen
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When we pray, we don't change the world, we change ourselves.
Rachel Naomi Remen
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I think ideas only lead to change for intellectual people and not even them. What really leads to change is experience. Life itself is the teacher.
Rachel Naomi Remen
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Just Listen an excerpt
Rachel Naomi Remen
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As I age I am grateful to find that a silence has begun to gather in me, coexisting with my tempers and my fears, unchanged by my joys or my pain. Sanctuary. Connected to the Silence everywhere.
Rachel Naomi Remen
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We are all born to be a blessing.
Rachel Naomi Remen