A Quote by Charles Eisenstein

We need way more intimacy than nearly anyone considers normal. Always hungry for it, we seek solace and sustenance in the closest available substitutes: television, shopping, pornography, conspicuous consumption - anything to ease the hurt, to feel connected, or to project an image by which we might be seen and known, or at least see and know ourselves.
Trust in someone means that we no longer have to protect ourselves. We believe we will not be hurt or harmed by the other, at least not deliberately. We trust his or her good intentions, though we know we might be hurt by the way circumstances play out between us. We might say that hurt happens; it’s a given of life. Harm is inflicted; it’s a choice some people make.
One cannot really know an other without intimacy. Detached, objective observations alone leave a surface upon which it is too easy to project one's own image or fantasies. In intimacy, one respectfully interacts with the other, invites the penetration of the other, enters into a common effort, and then the strange and distinct contours of self and other become more apparent.
The closest I came to doing anything that I wanted to do was to try and check and see what industries were just starting out. There was plastics and television, and I figured television had to be more fun than plastics.
The online shopping paradigm is finally changing. Indeed, I think we’ve seen more innovation in the last 10 months than in the last 10 years. We’ve seen an explosion of interesting technologies and opportunities that seek to change online shopping.
Before we understand how not to hurt, we must contribute to the peacefulness of it all, in that if we participate in any way, in anything that hurts, anything that involves killing and hurting, then we're hurting ourselves because we're not islands, we're all connected regardless of tradition, and because of that we're all connected.
We need not seek our own best selves, and in the meantime we inoculate ourselves against the viruses of age and idealism, which, as the advertising agencies well know, depress sales and sour the feasts of consumption.
God lives in cozy homes. Happiness, which a cozy home can give you, is so divine on this Earth, you don't need anything more than that. God is unseen but His creation is known and seen. What is known and seen for you, if you cannot relate to that how can you relate to the unknown? If you can relate knowingly to your unknown thought, you can always find happiness. But you have to have nerves for it. You have to have a mental capacity for it, you have to have trained yourself, and this is the part of that training I have come to share with you.
Normal adult shopping is something I will never actually do, because it's no more possible for me to go shopping like normal adults do than it is for a man with no legs to wake up one day and walk. I can't miss shopping like you'd miss things you once had. I miss it in a different way. I miss it like you would miss a train.
If instead of looking at income, you look at levels of consumption, if anything that's become more equal. The fraction of families that have a dishwasher, that have a sewing machine, that have a television set. In respect to consumption, it's very hard to avoid the view that people have been getting more equal rather than more unequal.
I think that people might watch reality television or what they see played out on media outlets and get ideas. We might be more anesthetized to divorce or bad behavior now because of what we see on television or on postings on TMZ. So it definitely could be filtering in to how we conduct ourselves.
I feel an intense intimacy with those who have this loathing interest in me. Further than this, I know what they mean, I sympathize with them, I understand them. There should be a name (as poetic as love) for this relationship between loather and loathed; it is of the closest and more full of passion than incest.
I am normal. In fact, I think I might be more normal than anyone else.
We are always more anxious to be distinguished for a talent which we do not possess, than to be praised for the fifteen which we do possess. Sometimes we are too close to the scene, to see clearly. We "know" ourselves so well that we cannot see how we are perceived by others. Our opinion of ourselves is only "one" opinion and it may not be the truth.
I think it's much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong. I have approximate answers, and possible beliefs, and different degrees of uncertainty about different things, but I am not absolutely sure of anything. There are many things I don't know anything about, such as whether it means anything to ask "Why are we here?" I might think about it a little bit, and if I can't figure it out then I go on to something else. But I don't have to know an answer. I don't feel frightened by not knowing things, by being lost in the mysterious universe without having any purpose - which is the way it really is, as far as I can tell.
You know at this point you have everything you need. It's available to you from the inside and you see you are supported in many ways. You realize that there is more to this dimension, to this reality, than you have seen before. You see you are being taken care of, you are being loved, you are being looked after. All that's needed is to go inside, become still and listen.
We all have various ways of dropping in and getting connected to ourselves. For one person it might be playing basketball. It's a good way to get in touch with how they feel. For somebody else, it might be taking a walk.
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