Life with most teenagers was like having a low-grade bladder infection. It hurts, but you had to tough it out.
Anne LamottRead
...It really IS easier to experience spiritual connection when your life is in the process of coming apart.
Interpretation
Spiritual connection often arises during life's challenging moments.
Anne Lamott suggests that in times of upheaval and personal chaos, individuals may find it easier to connect with their spiritual selves. This connection is often a source of comfort and insight, helping people navigate through difficult periods and find meaning in their struggles.
In practice
During a meditation workshop discussing the role of faith in times of crisis.
Life with most teenagers was like having a low-grade bladder infection. It hurts, but you had to tough it out.
Or you might shout at the top of your lungs or whisper into your sleeve, "I hate you, God." That is a prayer too, because it is real, it is truth, and maybe it is the first sincere thought you've had in months.
Your problem is how you are going to spend this one odd and precious life you have been issued. Whether you're going to spend it trying to look good and creating the illusion that you have power over people and circumstances, or whether you are going to taste it, enjoy it and find out the truth about who you are.
It is hard to remember that you are a cherished spiritual being when you're burping up apple fritters and Cheetos.
Gorgeous, amazing things come into our lives when we are paying attention: mangoes, grandnieces, Bach, ponds. This happens more often when we have as little expectation as possible. If you say, "Well, that's pretty much what I thought I'd see," you are in trouble. At that point you have to ask yourself why you are even here. [...] Astonishing material and revelation appear in our lives all the time. Let it be. Unto us, so much is given. We just have to be open for business.
...because when people have seen you at their worst, you don't have to put on the mask as much.
What a thing is and what it means are not separate, the former being physical and the latter mental as we are accustomed to believe.
Attainment is followed by neglect, possession by disgust, and the malicious remark of the Greek epigrammatist on marriage may be applied to many another course of life, that its two days of happiness are the first and the last
What the United States has done is to be open to people who are fleeing tyranny, who are fleeing danger, but we have done it in a very careful way that has worked for us.
In real meditation you forget the body. You may be cut to pieces and not feel it at all. You feel such pleasure in it. You become so light. This perfect rest we will get in meditation.
Are you a politician asking what your country can do for you or a zealous one asking what you can do for your country? If you are the first, then you are a parasite; if the second, then you are an oasis in the desert.
For although a man is judged by his actions, by what he has said and done, a man judges himself by what he is willing to do, by what he might have said, or might have doneβa judgment that is necessarily hampered, not only by the scope and limits of his imagination, but by the ever-changing measure of his doubt and self-esteem.
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