nicole’s Reviews > The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House > Status Update

"Guilt and defensiveness are bricks in a wall against which we all flounder; they serve none of our futures." BOOOOPPPPPP

"To refuse to be conscious of what we are feeling at any time, however comfortable that might seem, is to deny a large part of the experience, and to allow ourselves to be reduced to the pornographic, the abused, and the absurd."

"When we look away from the importance of the erotic in the development and sustenance of our power, or when we look away from ourselves as we satisfy our erotic needs in concert with others, we use each other as objects of satisfaction rather than share our joy in the satisfying, rather than make connection with our similarities and our differences."

"In touch with the erotic, I become less willing to accept powerlessness, (...) such as resignation, despair, self-effacement, depression, self-denial.

And yes, there is a hierarchy. There is a difference between painting a black fence and writing a poem, but only one of quantity. And there is, for me, no difference between writing a good poem and moving into sunlight against the body of a woman I love."

"(...) when we begin to live from within outward,(...) we begin to be responsible to ourselves in the deepest sense. For as we begin to recognise our deepest feelings, we begin to give up, of necessity, being satisfied with suffering and self-negation, and with the numbness which so often seems like their only alternative in our society. Our acts against oppression become integral with self (...)".

"When we live outside ourselves, and by that I mean on external directives only rather than from our internal knowledge and needs, (...) then our lives are limited by external and alien forms, and we conform to the needs of a structure that is not based on human need, let alone an individual's."

Too many bangers on this para need to split it into two updates 😭😭😭

"It is never easy to demand the most from ourselves, from our lives, from our work. To encourage excellence is to go beyond the encouraged mediocrity of our society. But giving in to the fear of feeling and working to capacity is a luxury only the unintentional can afford, and the unintentional are those who do not wish to guide their own destinies."

"The erotic has been misnamed by men and used against women. (...) For this reason, we have often turned away from the exploration and consideration of the erotic as a source of power and information, confusing it with its opposite, the pornographic. But pornography is a direct denial of the power of the erotic, for it represents the suppression of true feeling. Pornography emphasizes sensation without feeling."

"If what we need to dream, to move our spirits most deeply and directly towards and through promise, is discounted as a luxury, then we give up the core - the fountain - of our power, our womaness; we give up the future of our worlds.

For there are no new ideas. There are only new ways of making them felt (...) - while we suffer the old longings (...), while we taste new possibilities and strengths."