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I have always been a great dreamer. In dreams I have always been more active than in my real life, and these shadows sapped me of my health and energy."
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I used to think that to become free you had to practice like a samurai warrior, but now I understand that you have to practice like a devoted mother of a newborn child. It takes the same energy but has a completely different quality. It’s compassion and presence rather than having to defeat the enemy in battle."
Jack Kornfield, “The Question” -
The artist is not, as ordinary people think, a gay sort of person who flings off works of art here and there out of sheer exuberance. Unfortunately he is usually a poor soul who is being suffocated with surplus riches and therefore has to give some of them away. It is a fallacy that there are happy artists; that is just philistines’ talk. Lighthearted Mozart kept up his spirits with champagne and was consequently short of bread, and why Beethoven did not commit suicide in his youth instead of composing all that wonderful music, no one knows. A real artist in unhappy. Whenever he is hungry and opens his bags, there are only pearls inside it."
Hermann Hesse in Gertrude (1910)(Source: predatorywaspobserver, via hermannhesse)
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In moments of temptation or indecision - for example, when the man who has resolved not to gamble anymore is confronted with the gaming tables once again - one realises, painfully, that no motive and no past resolution, however strong, determines what one will do next."
Sartre, 1943 (via emmabutton)(via fuckyeahexistentialism)
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What would getting better mean? It would mean every part of my daily life changing. I would change. Everything I really know would be gone and replaced by…what? It’s too foreign to comprehend. I can’t fathom it. And because it is so very hard to give up your way of being and your habits and instead strive for something that you don’t understand at all, I have no hope. And I don’t want to continue in this for another forty, fifty years, so death is the only other option that makes sense to me. If I felt like I knew what normalcy would be like, if I knew enough to know it was worth the enormous struggle that recovery would be, I might be willing to consider it."
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You sit here buried, engrossed in your work and your unhappy marriage. Take the step, break away from all that, you’ll open your eyes and see that the world has thousands of wonderful things to offer you. You’ve been living with dead things too long, you’ve lost your contact with life."
Rosshalde by Hermann Hesse
(via hermannhesse)
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You don’t have to kill yourself."
Staff at inpatient -
Unwilling to fully live the life that is arriving in our bodies moment by moment, we find ourselves left with no real life at all. In our state of disembodied dissatisfaction we may think, ‘I feel like I’m disconnected. Maybe I need to change my job, or change my relationship, maybe, maybe, maybe.’ But the fact is that the fullness of our human existence is already happening all the time."
- Reggie Ray, “Touching Enlightenment” -
[Recovery is] when you can accept your natural body size and shape and no longer have a self destructive relationship with food or exercise. When you are recovered, food and weight take a proper position in your life, and what you weigh is not more important than who you are; in fact actual numbers are of little or no importance."
8 Keys to Recovery From an Eating Disorder by Carolyn Costin and Gwen Schubert Grabb -
I’m very much down to earth, just not this earth."
Karl Lagerfeld -
Sometimes, I feel like I’m not solid. I’m hollow; there’s nothing behind my eyes. I’m a negative of a person. It is as if I never thought anything, never wrote anything, never felt anything. All I want is blackness. Blackness and silence."
S. Plath (via claudere)(via betterthanbones)
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He fasted for fifteen days. He fasted for twenty-eight days. The flesh wasted away from his thighs and cheeks. Dreams flickered hotly from his widened eyes, on his shriveling fingers the nails grew long, as did the dry, stubbly beard on his chin. His gaze became icy when he met women; his mouth twitched in contempt when he passed through a town with well-dressed people. He saw merchants doing business, princes leaving for the hunt, mourners lamenting their dead, whores offering their services, doctors busy with patients, priests determining the proper day to begin sowing, lovers in love, mothers nursing their children— and none of it was worth the trouble of a glance, it was all a lie, it all stank, it all stank of lies, it all gave the illusion of meaning and happiness and beauty, and it was all unacknowledged decay. The world had a bitter taste. Life was torment."
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We all spend so much time not saying what we want, because we know we can’t have it. And because it sounds ungracious, or ungrateful, or disloyal, or childish, or banal. Or because we’re so desperate to pretend that things are OK, really, that confessing to ourselves they’re not looks like a bad move. Go on, say what you want. … Whatever it is, say it to yourself. The truth will set you free. Either that or it’ll get you a punch in the nose. Surviving in whatever life you’re living means lying, and lying corrodes the soul, so take a break from the lies for just one minute."
A Long Way Down by Nick Hornby (via fuckyeahexistentialism)(Source: thechocolatebrigade, via fuckyeahexistentialism)
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Should I kill myself, or have a cup of coffee?"
Albert Camus
(the age old question) (via fuckyeahexistentialism)
