Alexander Lowen Quotes

I don't have any romanticism about any part of my past. I think of it only inasmuch as it gave me pleasure or helped me grow psychologically. That is the only thing that interests me about yesterday. I don't believe in yesterday, by the way. You know I don't believe in yesterday. I am only interested in what I am doing now.

There was, really, nothing you could use as a blueprint for your life, except your past. There was no starting over. There was only picking up the pieces someone had left behind.

Or maybe a person is just made up of a lot of peopleMaybe we’re accumulating these new selves all the time. Hauling them in as we make choices, good and bad, as we screw up, step up, lose our minds, find our minds, fall apart, fall in love, as we grieve, grow, retreat from the world, dive into the world, as we make things, as we break things.

Sometimes we have to soak ourselves in the tears and fears of the past to water our future gardens.

In a futile attempt to erase our past, we deprive the community of our healing gift. If we conceal our wounds out of fear and shame, our inner darkness can neither be illuminated nor become a light for others.

You realize yourself when you start reflecting - because I don't live in the past, although your past is so much a part of what you are - that you can't ignore it. But I don't look at scrapbooks.

I'm still me even after all that's happened.

Men do change, and change comes like a little wind that ruffles the curtains at dawn, and it comes like the stealthy perfume of wildflowers hidden in the grass. Change may be announced by a small ache, so that you think you're catching cold. Or you may feel a faint disgust for something you loved yesterday. It may even take the form of a hunger that peanuts won't satisfy. Isn't overeating said to be one of the strongest symptoms of discontent. And isn't discontent the lever of change?

Life experience is what defines our character, even if it means getting your heart broken or being lied to. You know, you need the downs to appreciate the ups. Going on the adventure or taking that risk is important.

Writing this record let me recapture who I am. It is summed up in the title Be Not Nobody. You need to feel comfortable in your skin and do whatever you need to do for yourself, to heal or to grow.

We live in a society running from pain through alcohol, through too much exercise, through sugar, through drugs - as opposed to realizing that these things come up because they are lessons. It's a way to wake you up.

We learn and grow and are transformed not so much by what we do but by why and how we do it.

We are what the past has made us. We are what the future will make us. Live now. Right now.

Spiritual growth-looking inward-is replacing the pursuit of external power-reaching outward to manipulate and control-as the cure for the insecurity at the core of human experience.

without my wounds, who was I? My scars were my face, my past was my life.

The act of loving is an act of self-evolution even when the purpose of the act is someone else's growth.

I find my past in my present, and from these forecast my future.

You think you're being broken but you're really being broken open...and that's where the healing happens, in those broken places...if you'll allow it.

Half of spiritual growth is learning what we don't know. The other half is unlearning what we do know.

You knew me. You knew that person, but you don't know the person I'm trying to become... You are not your past!

Scars are souvenirs you never lose, the past is never far, did you lose yourself somewhere out there, did you get to be a star, and don't it make you sad to know that life is more than who you are?

The past is one evil less and one memory more.

It's not too difficult to get the skeletons out of the closet with people, but to get the gold out is a different matter. That is therapy. Psychology is the Art of finding the gold of the spirit.

For a while, Mirabelle believes there will be a moment when he will cave in and let himself love her, but eventually she lets the idea go. She hits bottom. She dwells in the muck for several months, not depressed exactly, but involved in a mourning that at first she thinks is for Ray but soon realizes is for the loss of her old self.

We talk about defining moments, but I think nothing can define you. They're all refining moments. You're constantly refining yourself and refining your life.