"The Long Bag We Drag Behind Us"
~(excerpt from A Little Book on the Human Shadow, Robert Bly, HarperCollins 1988)
“When we were one or two years old, most of us had 360-degree personalities. We were literally balls of energy radiating from all parts of our body and psyche. But as time went on, we noticed that our parents didn’t like certain parts of that ball. “Can’t you sit still?” Or, “It isn’t nice to hit and bite.”
“To keep our parents love, we started an invisible bag, and we put in that bag the parts of us our parents didn’t like. By the time we got to school, our bag was quite large. There, we added our teachers’ comments. “Play nice with others, don’t be bossy, don’t be so self-centered, and don’t get angry.” So we take our anger, our sense of self-importance, and put it in the bag.
“As teens, we do an extraordinary amount of bag-stuffing in high school. This time it’s no longer the evil grownup that pressures us, but people our own age...
“I so maintain that out of that round globe of energy the twenty-year-old ends up with a slice...
We spend our life until we’re twenty deciding what parts of ourselves to put into the bag, and we spend the rest of our lives trying to get them out again...”
“When we were one or two years old, most of us had 360-degree personalities. We were literally balls of energy radiating from all parts of our body and psyche. But as time went on, we noticed that our parents didn’t like certain parts of that ball. “Can’t you sit still?” Or, “It isn’t nice to hit and bite.”
“To keep our parents love, we started an invisible bag, and we put in that bag the parts of us our parents didn’t like. By the time we got to school, our bag was quite large. There, we added our teachers’ comments. “Play nice with others, don’t be bossy, don’t be so self-centered, and don’t get angry.” So we take our anger, our sense of self-importance, and put it in the bag.
“As teens, we do an extraordinary amount of bag-stuffing in high school. This time it’s no longer the evil grownup that pressures us, but people our own age...
“I so maintain that out of that round globe of energy the twenty-year-old ends up with a slice...
We spend our life until we’re twenty deciding what parts of ourselves to put into the bag, and we spend the rest of our lives trying to get them out again...”
Other Beloved Quotes
"I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did. But people will never forget how you made them feel. " - Maya Angelou
* What does your heart tell you? - Aragorn, The Lord of the Rings
* The rush and pressure of modern life are a form...perhaps the most common form...of its innate violence. - Thomas Merton
* Follow your bliss and the universe will open doors where there were only walls. - Joseph Campbell
* I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately…and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. - Henry David Thoreau
* The heart's deepest purpose is to balance. - James Burgess
* The heart's memory is stronger than death; the mind's memory is not. - Steven Forrest
* All you have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to you. - Gandalf, The Lord of the Rings
* Any extreme suggests the opposite. - John Heider, The Tao of Leadership
* Better games would empty entire wings of (our) mental hospitals. - Michael Murphy, Golf in the Kingdom
* Why worry? What is meant for you is always meant to find you. - Lalleshwari
* Run my dear from anyone and anything that does not strengthen your precious budding wings. - Hafiz
* Set your life on fire. Seek those who fan your flame. - Mevlana Rumi
* So far no one has succeeded in singing an epic of peace. What is it about peace that keeps its inspiration from enduring? - Wim Wenders, Wings of Desire
* Just keep going. No feeling is final. - Rainer Maria Rilke
* ...devoted discipline and grace will bring ye knowin's and powers everywhere, in all your life, in all your works if they're good works, in all your loves if they're good loves. - Michael Murphy, Golf in the Kingdom
* To everything there is a season and a time for every purpose under heaven. - Ecclesiastes 3:1
* The wind of God's grace is incessantly blowing. - Sri Ramakrishna Math
* Stand at the crossroads and look, and ask for the ancient paths where the good way lies, and walk therein, and you shall find rest for your souls. - Jeremiah 6:16
* At the end of his life, Sigmund Freud said "Thank God I'm not a Freudian." - (a willingness to grow, evolve and change)
* Try once, try twice, then yield. - John Heider
* The fish will be the last to discover water." - Albert Einstein (To which I would add, the fish will very likely be in deep trouble, and a lot less water than usual, when it does.) - Ron Kurtz, founder of Hakomi Body-centered Psychotherapy
* "It's worth a nickel if I say it, a dime if YOU do." - John Heider (meaning insights we discover about ourselves from within are almost always more potent than when pointed out to us by others.)
"The body is the subconscious mind." - Candace Pert MD
"What lies behind you and what lies in front of you, pales in comparison to what lies inside of you." – Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference." - Robert Frost
"Any extreme suggests the opposite." - John Heider, The Tao of Leadership
"Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience."- Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Not all who wander are lost" - J. R. R. Tolkien
"It's worth a nickel if I say it, a dime if YOU do." - John Heider (meaning insights we discover about ourselves from within are almost always more potent than when pointed out to us by others.)
"To everything there is a season and a time for every purpose under heaven." - Ecclesiastes 3:1
"I can't see you but I know you're here. I feel it." - Peter Falk in Wings of Desire
"She asks me to kill the spider. Instead, I get the most peaceful weapons I can find. I take a cup and a napkin. I catch the spider, put it outside and allow it to walk away. If I am ever caught in the wrong place at the wrong time, just being alive and not bothering anyone, I hope I am greeted with the same kind of mercy." - Mercy, Rudy Francisco
"Once more, you open the door
And you're here in my heart
And my heart will go on and on." - Céline Dion
"Be careful whose toes you step on today, for they may be attached to the #$% that you have to kiss tomorrow." - author unknown
"The grace of God is a wind that is always blowing." - Sri Ramakrishna Math
"The heart's deepest purpose is to balance." - James Burgess
"I have my assigned mission which I must complete...a newspaper has its own mission and a farmer his. Everyone has his own mission. Thus all we have to do is to complete our heavenly chosen missions. If this were the case, there wouldn't be any disagreements, would there? - Morihei Ueshiba, founder of Aikido
* "My Brownies (Scottish name for nature spirits who work only for the joy of it), God bless them! who do one-half my work for me while I am fast asleep, and in all human likelihood, do the rest for me as well, when I am wide awake and fondly suppose I do it for myself. That part which is done while I am sleeping is the Brownies’ part beyond contention; but that which is done when I am up and about is by no means necessarily mine, since all goes to show the Brownies have a hand in it even then. Here is a doubt that much concerns my conscience. For myself—what I call I, my conscious ego, the denizen of the pineal gland unless he has changed his residence since Descartes, the man with the conscience and the variable bank-account, the man with the hat and the boots, and the privilege of voting and not carrying his candidate at the general elections—I am sometimes tempted to suppose is no story-teller at all, but a creature as matter of fact as any cheesemonger or any cheese, and a realist bemired up to the ears in actuality; so that, by that account, the whole of my published fiction should be the single-handed product of some Brownie, some Familiar, some unseen collaborator, whom I keep locked in a back garret, while I get all the praise and he but a share (which I cannot prevent him getting) of the pudding. I am an excellent adviser, something like Molière’s servant. I pull back and I cut down; and I dress the whole in the best words and sentences that I can find and make; I hold the pen, too; and I do the sitting at the table, which is about the worst of it; and when all is done, I make up the manuscript and pay for the registration; so that, on the whole, I have some claim to share, though not so largely as I do, in the profits of our common enterprise. - Robert Louis Stevenson, A Chapter on Dreams
* What does your heart tell you? - Aragorn, The Lord of the Rings
* The rush and pressure of modern life are a form...perhaps the most common form...of its innate violence. - Thomas Merton
* Follow your bliss and the universe will open doors where there were only walls. - Joseph Campbell
* I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately…and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. - Henry David Thoreau
* The heart's deepest purpose is to balance. - James Burgess
* The heart's memory is stronger than death; the mind's memory is not. - Steven Forrest
* All you have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to you. - Gandalf, The Lord of the Rings
* Any extreme suggests the opposite. - John Heider, The Tao of Leadership
* Better games would empty entire wings of (our) mental hospitals. - Michael Murphy, Golf in the Kingdom
* Why worry? What is meant for you is always meant to find you. - Lalleshwari
* Run my dear from anyone and anything that does not strengthen your precious budding wings. - Hafiz
* Set your life on fire. Seek those who fan your flame. - Mevlana Rumi
* So far no one has succeeded in singing an epic of peace. What is it about peace that keeps its inspiration from enduring? - Wim Wenders, Wings of Desire
* Just keep going. No feeling is final. - Rainer Maria Rilke
* ...devoted discipline and grace will bring ye knowin's and powers everywhere, in all your life, in all your works if they're good works, in all your loves if they're good loves. - Michael Murphy, Golf in the Kingdom
* To everything there is a season and a time for every purpose under heaven. - Ecclesiastes 3:1
* The wind of God's grace is incessantly blowing. - Sri Ramakrishna Math
* Stand at the crossroads and look, and ask for the ancient paths where the good way lies, and walk therein, and you shall find rest for your souls. - Jeremiah 6:16
* At the end of his life, Sigmund Freud said "Thank God I'm not a Freudian." - (a willingness to grow, evolve and change)
* Try once, try twice, then yield. - John Heider
* The fish will be the last to discover water." - Albert Einstein (To which I would add, the fish will very likely be in deep trouble, and a lot less water than usual, when it does.) - Ron Kurtz, founder of Hakomi Body-centered Psychotherapy
* "It's worth a nickel if I say it, a dime if YOU do." - John Heider (meaning insights we discover about ourselves from within are almost always more potent than when pointed out to us by others.)
"The body is the subconscious mind." - Candace Pert MD
"What lies behind you and what lies in front of you, pales in comparison to what lies inside of you." – Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference." - Robert Frost
"Any extreme suggests the opposite." - John Heider, The Tao of Leadership
"Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience."- Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Not all who wander are lost" - J. R. R. Tolkien
"It's worth a nickel if I say it, a dime if YOU do." - John Heider (meaning insights we discover about ourselves from within are almost always more potent than when pointed out to us by others.)
"To everything there is a season and a time for every purpose under heaven." - Ecclesiastes 3:1
"I can't see you but I know you're here. I feel it." - Peter Falk in Wings of Desire
"She asks me to kill the spider. Instead, I get the most peaceful weapons I can find. I take a cup and a napkin. I catch the spider, put it outside and allow it to walk away. If I am ever caught in the wrong place at the wrong time, just being alive and not bothering anyone, I hope I am greeted with the same kind of mercy." - Mercy, Rudy Francisco
"Once more, you open the door
And you're here in my heart
And my heart will go on and on." - Céline Dion
"Be careful whose toes you step on today, for they may be attached to the #$% that you have to kiss tomorrow." - author unknown
"The grace of God is a wind that is always blowing." - Sri Ramakrishna Math
"The heart's deepest purpose is to balance." - James Burgess
"I have my assigned mission which I must complete...a newspaper has its own mission and a farmer his. Everyone has his own mission. Thus all we have to do is to complete our heavenly chosen missions. If this were the case, there wouldn't be any disagreements, would there? - Morihei Ueshiba, founder of Aikido
* "My Brownies (Scottish name for nature spirits who work only for the joy of it), God bless them! who do one-half my work for me while I am fast asleep, and in all human likelihood, do the rest for me as well, when I am wide awake and fondly suppose I do it for myself. That part which is done while I am sleeping is the Brownies’ part beyond contention; but that which is done when I am up and about is by no means necessarily mine, since all goes to show the Brownies have a hand in it even then. Here is a doubt that much concerns my conscience. For myself—what I call I, my conscious ego, the denizen of the pineal gland unless he has changed his residence since Descartes, the man with the conscience and the variable bank-account, the man with the hat and the boots, and the privilege of voting and not carrying his candidate at the general elections—I am sometimes tempted to suppose is no story-teller at all, but a creature as matter of fact as any cheesemonger or any cheese, and a realist bemired up to the ears in actuality; so that, by that account, the whole of my published fiction should be the single-handed product of some Brownie, some Familiar, some unseen collaborator, whom I keep locked in a back garret, while I get all the praise and he but a share (which I cannot prevent him getting) of the pudding. I am an excellent adviser, something like Molière’s servant. I pull back and I cut down; and I dress the whole in the best words and sentences that I can find and make; I hold the pen, too; and I do the sitting at the table, which is about the worst of it; and when all is done, I make up the manuscript and pay for the registration; so that, on the whole, I have some claim to share, though not so largely as I do, in the profits of our common enterprise. - Robert Louis Stevenson, A Chapter on Dreams
I can't see you but I know you're here. I feel it. - Peter Falk in Wings of Desire
