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Rachel Naomi Remen

Rachel Naomi Remen Quotes

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Famous Rachel Naomi Remen Quotes

“I suspect that the most basic and powerful way to connect to another person is to listen. Just listen. Perhaps the most important thing we ever give each other is our attention And especially if it's given from the heart. When people are talking, there's no need to do anything but receive them. Just take them in. Listen to what they're saying. Care about it. Most times caring about it is even more important than understanding it. Most of us don't value ourselves or our love enough to know this.”

PeopleIfsKnowsWayNeedsGivingHeartPersonsImportantEnoughCareValuesGivenUnderstandingPowerfulAttentionTalkingCommunicationImportant ThingsCaringSuspectsOur LoveJust Listen
Book:Kitchen Table Wisdom: Stories that Heal, 10th Anniversary Edition
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“Wounding and healing are not opposites. They're part of the same thing. It is our wounds that enable us to be compassionate with the wounds of others. It is our limitations that make us kind to the limitations of other people. It is our loneliness that helps us to to find other people or to even know they're alone with an illness. I think I have served people perfectly with parts of myself I used to be ashamed of.”

PeopleThinkingKnowsKindHelpingUsedHealingLonelinessOppositesIllnessWoundsUsed To BeLimitationAshamedCompassionate
Author:Rachel Naomi Remen
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“Most people have come to prefer certain of lifes experiences and deny and reject others, unaware of the value of the hidden things that may come wrapped in plain and even ugly paper. In avoiding all pain and seeking comfort at all costs, we may be left without intimacy or compassion; in rejecting change and risk we often cheat ourselves of the quest; in denying our suffering we may never know our strength or our greatness”

PeopleKnowsMayPainCertainSufferingValuesLeftCompassionRiskGreatnessComfortCostPaperSeekingUglyDenyIntimacyRejectsQuestsCheatAvoidingRejectingHidden Things
Book:Kitchen Table Wisdom: Stories that Heal, 10th Anniversary Edition
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“In this culture the soul and the heart too often go homeless. Listening creates a holy silence. When you listen generously to people, they can hear the truth in themselves, often for the first time. And in the silence of listening, you can know yourself in everyone. Eventually you may be able to hear, in everyone and beyond everyone, the unseen singing softly to itself and to you.”

PeopleKnowsFirstsHeartMaySoulAbleCultureSilenceListeningHolySingingFirst TimeHomelessUnseenKnow Yourself
Author:Rachel Naomi Remen
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“One of my patients told me that when she tried to tell her story people often interrupted her to tell her that they once had something just like that happen to them. Subtly her pain became a story about themselves. Eventually she stopped talking to most people. It was just too lonely. We connect through listening. When we interrupt what someone is saying to let them know that we understand, we move the focus of attention to ourselves. When we listen, they know we care. Many people with cancer talk about the relief of having someone just listen.”

PeopleKnowsStoriesHappensCarePainMovingAttentionTalkingFocusListeningLonelyPatientCancerReliefInterruptedJust ListenStory PeoplePeople With Cancer
Author:Rachel Naomi Remen
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“Most of us lead far more meaningful lives than we know. Often finding meaning is not about doing things differently; it is about seeing familiar things in new ways. When we find new eyes, the unsuspected blessing in work we have done for many years may take us completely by surprise. We can see life in many ways: with the eye, with the mind, with the intuition. But perhaps it is only those who speak the language of meaning, who have remembered how to see with the heart, that life is ever deeply known or served.”

KnowsWayYearsMindHeartMayDoneEyeLife IsSpeakLanguageKnownSeeingPerspectiveBlessingFindingsSurpriseIntuitionMeaningfulFamiliarRememberedNew WaysMeaningful LifeNew EyesFamiliar Things
Author: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.”

IfsKnowsWayDoeGodEarthAttentionInfinitePay AttentionGravityNever ChangeGod's Presence
Book:Kitchen Table Wisdom: Stories that Heal, 10th Anniversary Edition
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“Many people do not know that they can strengthen or diminish the life around them. The way we live day to day simply may not reflect back to us our power to influence life or the web of relationships that connects us. Life responds to us anyway. We all have the power to affect others. We may affect those we know and those we do not even know at all. . . . Without our knowing, we may influence the lives of others in very simple ways.”

PeopleKnowsWayMayCommunitySimpleKnowingInfluenceDay To DayDiminishLives Of OthersSimple Ways
Author:Rachel Naomi Remen
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“Unexplained pain may sometimes direct our attention to something unacknowledged, something we are afraid to know or feel. Then it holds us to our integrity, claiming the attention we withhold. The thing which calls our attention may be a repressed experience or some unexpressed and important part of who we are. Whatever we have denied may stop us and dam the creative flow of our lives. Avoiding pain, we may linger in the vicinity of our wounds, sometime for many years, gathering the courage to experience them.”

KnowsFeelsYearsMayImportantSometimesPainAttentionCreativeOur LivesIntegrityFlowDirectWoundsWho We AreDeniedAvoidingGatheringRepressedDamsUnexplainedVicinityAvoiding Pain
Author:Rachel Naomi Remen
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“Wisdom comes most easily to those who have the courage to embrace life without judgment and are willing to not know, sometimes for a long time. It requires us to be more fully and simply alive than we have been taught to be. It may require us to suffer. But ultimately we will be more than we were when we began. There is the seed of a greater wholeness in everyone.”

KnowsMayLongHas BeensSometimesWisdomSufferingGreaterAliveTaughtWillingJudgmentLong TimeEmbraceSeedsWholenessEmbrace Life
Author:Rachel Naomi Remen
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