Elizabeth Lesser > Quotes

“How strange that the nature of life is change, yet the nature of human beings is to resist change. And how ironic that the difficult times we fear might ruin us are the very ones that can break us open and help us blossom into who we were meant to be.”
― Elizabeth Lesser, Broken Open: How Difficult Times Can Help Us Grow

“Adversity is a natural part of being human. It is the height of arrogance to prescribe a moral code or health regime or spiritual practice as an amulet to keep things from falling apart. Things do fall apart. It is in their nature to do so. When we try to protect ourselves from the inevitability of change, we are not listening to the soul. We are listening to our fear of life and death, our lack of faith, our smaller ego's will to prevail. To listen to your soul is to stop fighting with life--to stop fighting when things fall apart; when they don't go our away, when we get sick, when we are betrayed or mistreated or misunderstood. To listen to the soul is to slow down, to feel deeply, to see ourselves clearly, to surrender to discomfort and uncertainty and to wait.”
― Elizabeth Lesser

“What will matter is the good we did, not the good we expected others to do.”
― Elizabeth Lesser, Broken Open: How Difficult Times Can Help Us Grow

“I recently heard a great writer say that an essential element in the life of a writer is to have been an outsider in childhood, to have been given the "gift" of not belonging. ”
― Elizabeth Lesser, The Seeker's Guide: Making Your Life a Spiritual Adventure

“Meditation practice is like piano scales, basketball drills, ballroom dance class. Practice requires discipline; it can be tedious; it is necessary. After you have practiced enough, you become more skilled at the art form itself. You do not practice to become a great scale player or drill champion. You practice to become a musician or athlete. Likewise, one does not practice meditation to become a great meditator. We meditate to wake up and live, to become skilled at the art of living.”
― Elizabeth Lesser, The Seeker's Guide: Making Your Life a Spiritual Adventure

“Whatever is happening, whatever is changing, whatever is going or not going according to my plans—I release my hold on all of it. I leave behind who I think I am, who I want to be, what I want the world to be. I come home to the great peace of the present moment,”
― Elizabeth Lesser, Broken Open: How Difficult Times Can Help Us Grow

“It is the acceptance of death that has finally allowed me to choose life.”
― Elizabeth Lesser

“May you listen to the voice within the beat even when you are tired. When you feel yourself breaking down, may you break open instead. May every experience in life be a door that opens your heart, expands your understanding, and leads you to freedom. If you are weary, may you be aroused by passion and purpose. If you are blameful and bitter, may you be sweetened by hope and humor. If you are frightened, may you be emboldened by a big consciousness far wiser than your fear. If you are lonely, may you find love, may you find friendship. If you are lost, may you understand that we are all lost, and still we are guided—by Strange Angels and Sleeping Giants, by our better and kinder natures, by the vibrant voice within the beat. May you follow that voice, for This is the way—the hero’s journey, the life worth living, the reason we are here.  ”
― Elizabeth Lesser, Broken Open: How Difficult Times Can Help Us Grow

“A broken heart is not the same as sadness. Sadness occurs when the heart is stone cold and lifeless. On the contrary, there is an unbelievable amount of vitality in a broken heart.”
― Elizabeth Lesser, Broken Open: How Difficult Times Can Help Us Grow

“If we do not suffer a loss all the way to the end, it will wait for us. It won’t just dissipate and disappear. Rather, it will fester, and we will experience its sorrow later, in stranger forms.”
― Elizabeth Lesser, Broken Open: How Difficult Times Can Help Us Grow

“How quickly I judge, and therefore diminish their humanity.”
― Elizabeth Lesser, Broken Open: How Difficult Times Can Help Us Grow

“When there is nothing left to lose, we find the true self—the self that is whole, the self that is enough, the self that no longer looks to others for definition, or completion, or anything but companionship on the journey.”
― Elizabeth Lesser, Broken Open: How Difficult Times Can Help Us Grow

“The world wold have been different - and better - if women had had an equal say in the development of literature, medicine, chemistry, physics, peace and economics. Better, not because women are better, but because they are more than half of humanity, representing more than half of what it means to be human.”
― Elizabeth Lesser, Cassandra Speaks: When Women Are the Storytellers, the Human Story Changes

“I am not suggesting that everything bad that happens to us is sent directly by a knowing hand—cooked up specially for our personal development. Nor do I mean that by using the stuff of life as grist for the mill you will learn what you need to learn and move on into a problem-free world. And I also don’t recommend courting drama and disaster so that you can be broken open to the truth. A catastrophe is not a sign that God has singled you out for greatness. What I do mean is that you can use anything—everything—as a wake-up call; you can find a treasure trove of information about yourself and the world in the big trials and the little annoyances of daily life. If you turn around and face yourself in times of loss and pain, you will be given the key to a more truthful—and therefore a more joyful—life.”
― Elizabeth Lesser, Broken Open: How Difficult Times Can Help Us Grow

“To turn back is one kind of death; to go forward is another.”
― Elizabeth Lesser, Broken Open: How Difficult Times Can Help Us Grow

“Over and over, we are broken on the shore of life. Our stubborn egos are knocked around, and our frightened hearts are broken open—not once, and not in predictable patterns, but in surprising ways and for as long as we live.”
― Elizabeth Lesser, Broken Open: How Difficult Times Can Help Us Grow

“Full-hearted fatherhood might save the world.”
― Elizabeth Lesser, Cassandra Speaks: When Women Are the Storytellers, the Human Story Changes

“So much of what we do each day is a diversion from what our lives are really about. A traumatic event is like a knife slicing through our diversionary tactics and exposing the vein of truth—the truth of what we really want, of how we really feel, of the wrongs we have visited upon each other, of the love we crave from each other.”
― Elizabeth Lesser, Broken Open: How Difficult Times Can Help Us Grow

“If there is one thing that has made a difference in my life, it is the courage to turn and face what wants to change within me.”
― Elizabeth Lesser, Broken Open: How Difficult Times Can Help Us Grow

“The Persian poet Rumi says, The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you. Don’t go back to sleep. You must ask for what you really want.”
― Elizabeth Lesser, Broken Open: How difficult times can help us grow

“Your lesson in this lifetime is to find and trust your own precious voice.”
― Elizabeth Lesser

“If all we do is immerse ourselves in the stories of bad people doing bad things to each other and the planet, we will sink under the weight of a lopsided story.”
― Elizabeth Lesser, Cassandra Speaks: When Women Are the Storytellers, the Human Story Changes

“It is our birthright to uncover the soul—to remove the layers of fear or shame or apathy or cynicism that conceal it.”
― Elizabeth Lesser, Broken Open: How Difficult Times Can Help Us Grow

“To banish the Hideous Damsel's darkness is to sterilize one's chance at the evolution she brings.”
― Elizabeth Lesser, Broken Open: How Difficult Times Can Help Us Grow

“The greatest stories ever told trace a path through the charred and exalted landscape of romantic love.”
― Elizabeth Lesser, Broken Open: How Difficult Times Can Help Us Grow

“The basic belief of feminism is not that women are right and men are wrong; It is merely that women are people and therefor their voices matter, their values matter and their stories matter. It's time for women to tell their versions of what it means to be fully human. It is time for men to respect those insights and it is time for all of us to integrate them into a new story of power.”
― Elizabeth Lesser, Cassandra Speaks: When Women Are the Storytellers, the Human Story Changes

“every catastrophe can hand us exactly what we need to awaken into who we really are.”
― Elizabeth Lesser, Broken Open: How Difficult Times Can Help Us Grow

“That's why we tell the stories. To ease the anxiety of being soft-skinned mortals. To inspire the soul to fathom eternity. To give order to what feels out of control. To guide, to blame, to warn, to shame. To make some kind of sense out of why people do what they do, why things happen the way they happen, and how we might all meet each other and daily life with less turmoil and more stability. That's why we cling to the old stories.”
― Elizabeth Lesser, Cassandra Speaks: When Women Are the Storytellers, the Human Story Changes

“May you listen to the voice within the beat even when you are tired. When you feel yourself breaking down, may you break open instead. May every experience in life be a door that opens your heart, expands your understanding, and leads you to freedom. If you are weary, may you be aroused by passion and purpose. If you are blameful and bitter, may you be sweetened by hope and humor.
If you are frightened, may you be emboldened by a big consciousness far wiser than your fear. If you are lonely, may you find love, may you find friendship. If you are lost, may you understand that we are all
lost, and still we are guided—by Strange Angels and Sleeping Giants, by our better and kinder natures, by the vibrant voice within the beat. May you follow that voice, for This is the way—the hero’s journey, the life worth living, the reason we are here.”
― Elizabeth Lesser

“what feels like such a painful loss now will become something beautiful later on. You cannot escape your destiny. You can certainly try. People do so every day. They hold on tight, and the river just dries up.”
― Elizabeth Lesser, Broken Open: How difficult times can help us grow