Sublime
An inspiration engine for ideas
I have learned to understand that the painful emotions are mine—they belong to me—and in fact the other person has done me a service by reflecting back to me my unresolved wounds.
Howard G. Charing • The Accidental Shaman: Journeys with Plant Teachers and Other Spirit Allies
I was impressed by how carefully he tracked subtle shifts in body posture, facial expression, tone of voice, and eye gaze, the nonverbal expressions of emotion. (This is called “microtracking” in psychomotor therapy).
Bessel van der Kolk • The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma
Isolated in the freezing night, they used to chant their poems huddled around fires in precarious huts, while outside the winds of the interminable arctic winters howled. If the Icelanders had spent all those nights in silence listening to the mocking wind, their minds would have soon filled with dread and despair.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi • Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (Harper Perennial Modern Classics)
In Michelle Cliff’s “Notes on Speechlessness” she writes, “Speechlessness involves self-denial…to choose to express/to choose to express anger.”[1] I add in the margin: “and for me, to choose to express joy/to choose to feel/to choose to feel pleasure,” because both disappeared when language disappeared. I neglected life-sustaining joy because surv
... See moreCameron Russell • How to Make Herself Agreeable to Everyone: A Memoir
The most inspiring work in the world today is being performed by those who have undergone this initiatory passage, those who have returned with precious resources for a soulcentric or life-sustaining society. This is the descent of which Thomas writes, the mature hero's journey described by mythologist Joseph Campbell, the descent to the goddess po
... See moreBill Plotkin • Nature and the Human Soul: Cultivating Wholeness and Community in a Fragmented World
Then there’s developmental psychology, which maintains that our basic nature is dependent on the kind of parenting we received. If you were fortunate to have “good enough” parenting during certain critical periods in your early development, you emerged from childhood with a certain amount of “ego strength.” If you didn’t, you were out of luck. You
... See moreRichard C. Schwartz • Introduction to Internal Family Systems
Can fathers provide the container for the holding and separating experience so crucial to growth? It seems unlikely. Their role is to protect us from being contained too long! Women can provide a safe place for us to express our feelings and make our unique choices. Men can show us a safe exit into the larger world. And if fathers are sometimes so
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