2016-06-30
People like you and I, though mortal of course like everyone else, do not grow old no matter how long we live...[We] never cease to stand like curious children before the great mystery into which we were born.
-Albert Einstein in a letter to Otto Juliusburger

Rachel Naomi Remen to Bill Moyers in "Healing and the Mind":

You weren't born with your beliefs. Some of your beliefs may help you to live, and some of them may not. And you need to be able to sort them out, because only the ones that are true, only the ones that can help you to live, are the ones you want to keep. Let me give you an image. I bought a little, falling-down cabin on the top of a mountain. It was so sad that a friend said, "Oh, Rachel, you bought this?" But with two carpenters, an electrician, and a plumber, we have remodeled the whole thing in three years.

We started by just throwing things away-bathtubs, light fixtures, windows. I kept hearing my father's voice saying, "That's a perfectly good light fixture, why are you throwing it away?" We kept throwing away more and more things, and with everything we threw away, the building became more whole. It had more integrity. Finally, we had thrown away everything that didn't belong. You know, we may think we need to be more in order to be whole. But in some ways, we need to be less. We need to let go, to throw away everything that isn't us in order to be more whole.

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Also on Beliefnet:

  • How Silence Soothes the Harried Soul


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