"To learn to listen to our body is to our body is to accept that we are our bodies, not that we have a body." (xii)
Lao-Tze (Chinese philosopher), says "It is the concern for the right and wrong which is the sickness of the mind." (xv)
Interdependence is a prerequisite to full maturity. (4)
"We must show our weakness before we can realize our strength." (22)
Pleasure is very closely related to creativity. (72)
"Love is better the second time around," - lyrics (93)
It is more than possible that a deprivation in the early years may help a person to love more deeply as an adult. (93)
Authentic love is a relationship in which two people touch and hold each other, share a mutual concern, and experience each other totally through the manifestations of eros, empathy, friendship, and agape. When all of the four dimensions of love are present, we experience an actualizing relationship. When any one of them is missing or distorted, we have a manipulative encounter. (94)
It is important that we establish some criteria, some standards by which to judge the significance of all relationships. (94)
When I wrote earlier in the chapter that there is morphing in life more important than love, I was referring to what Abraham Maslow called "the peak experience," the capacity to fully actualize our love journey in terms of the human encounter. Ideally, in this peak experience we no longer feel our own expectations, needs, fears, and demands. Instead we accept the other person trustingly and experience a sense of identification with the vast spectrum of ideologies and personalities that compromise the entire human race. We move, in our complete love, from people to nations, embracing all human beings in an interdependent manner, free of any manipulative thoughts. When this happens, we achieve what might be termed an emotional orgasm. Nothing matters but being fully there with that one person and, by extension, of being one with the world. (94-95)
"Are you independent?" or "Are you interdependent?" (99)
I asked each of them to state the central ideas which guided him in his own personal and professional growth. (108)
"I conceive - I can - I will," and finally, "I am." (137)
My philosophy of therapy is that you cannot live or be alive without pain and suffering, and every polar feeling has its own kind of pain as well as joy." (162)
An actualizing person is one who sees his life in perspective and who is willing to risk the dissolution of old relationships in a search for a better future. (162)
"Within marriage - the most intimate and personal of all relationships - we must be ourselves. We must train ourselves to open up, to communicate directly with our spouses, to remove the mask of independence." (163)
THE KEY TO FREEDOM I used to think that Freedom Was what someone gave to me. Until I found that I was bound By nameless heavy chains I could not see. I used to think that Freedom Was what someone gave to me. Until I learned that what I'd earned Was simply mypermission TO use that very freedom That no one but myself Could give to me. Those locks and bonds and prisons Are the things we've learned to hate Yet these most despised constructions Are identically the ones We have masterfully come to create. I've spent my lifetime waiting For someone to set me free. I could not grow I didn't know That in my very hands I held The key. by. Dr. Shirley Kashoff: