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Rachel Naomi Remen

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Famous Rachel Naomi Remen Quotes

“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…. A loving silence often has far more power to heal and to connect than the most well-intentioned words.”

WayLoveInspirationalGivingWellsPersonsImportantPowerfulAttentionSilenceAwarenessListeningImportant ThingsHealSilence IsJust ListenListening To OthersKitchen Table
Book:Kitchen Table Wisdom: Stories that Heal, 10th Anniversary Edition
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“Listening is the oldest and perhaps the most powerful tool of healing. It is often through the quality of our listening and not the wisdom of our words that we are able to effect the most profound changes in the people around us. When we listen, we offer with our attention an opportunity for wholeness. Our listening creates sanctuary for the homeless parts within the other person. That which has been denied, unloved, devalued by themselves and others. That which is hidden.”

PeoplePersonsHas BeensAbleOpportunityPowerfulHealingAttentionQualityEffectsListeningOffersToolsProfoundMost PowerfulDeniedWholenessHomelessSanctuaryOur WordsUnloved
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.”

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Author:Rachel Naomi Remen
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“When we haven't the time to listen to each other's stories we seek out experts to tell us how to live. The less time we spend together at the kitchen table, the more how-to books appear in the stores and on our bookshelves. But reading such books is a very different thing than listening to someone' s lived experience. Because we have stopped listening to each other we may even have forgotten how to listen, stopped learning how to recognize meaning and fill ourselves from the ordinary events of our lives. We have become solitary; readers and watchers rather than sharers and participants.”

MayBookDifferentStoriesTogetherReadingOur LivesEventsHavensListeningReaderOrdinaryTablesForgottenStoresExpertsKitchenDifferent ThingsSolitaryParticipantsWatchersBookshelvesKitchen Table
Book:Kitchen Table Wisdom: Stories that Heal, 10th Anniversary Edition
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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.”

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Author:Rachel Naomi Remen
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“I have even learned to respond to someone crying by just listening. In the old days I used to reach for the tissues, until I realized that passing a person a tissue may be just another way to shut them down, to take them out of their experience of sadness and grief. Now I just listen. When they have cried all they need to cry, they find me there with them.”

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Book:Kitchen Table Wisdom: Stories that Heal, 10th Anniversary Edition
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“There are few master teachers in life. ... But there are many who can listen to life so well that they can hear the vastness in everything and in you. A teacher is someone who has learned to listen to life. Someone who has found a way to listen well. Any real teacher is only a finger pointing. In the end, we may find out more by not following our teachers but by following what our teachers follow for themselves. From a good teacher you may learn the secret of listening. You will never learn the secrets of life. You will have to listen for yourself.”

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Author:Rachel Naomi Remen
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