Liberation
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?
Actually, who are you not to be?
You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world.
There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t
feel insecure around you.
We are all meant to shine, as children do.
We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It is
not just in some of us; it is in everyone.
And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission
to do the same.
As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates
others.
from A Return To Love: Reflections on the Principles of A Course in
Miracles
Chapter 7, Section 3
by Marianne Williamson
Security is mostly a superstition.
Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure.
Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.
Helen Keller
I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartanlike as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness out of it and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience ...
from Walden
Henry David Thoreau