Katherine Woodward Thomas Quotes

Until you are able to see yourself living the life that you truly want, it will be difficult for you to create it.

We will prepare ourselves for love by opening our hearts to those in our lives at a whole new level, exploring and expanding our capacity for healthy interdependence

Make room for love and it always comes. Make a nest for love and it always settles. Make a home for the beloved and he will find his way there. —Marianne Williamson, A Woman’s Worth

If you are operating under the illusion that you can continue to hold on to people who you know are not good for you, and still create an extraordinary life filled with love and fulfillment, then you are fooling yourself. Toxic ties cost us and they cost us big time. If you are feeling stuck in your life, look to see who or what it is that you are stuck to.

We must be willing to get rid of the life we’ve planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us. —Joseph Campbell

Every way that you’ve given away your power, denied your own deeper knowing, put someone else’s feelings and needs before your own, stayed embedded in a victimized story, or settled for less in life—all of it is now up for review. You have nowhere to hide. Life has broken you open and it is violently, mercilessly forcing you to evolve, to develop, and to grow.

Human beings are not meant to live in isolation. We are here to have relationships.

As author Daphne Rose Kingma says, “Love is trying to find us.” Love is insisting that we up the ante. Love works these days only when entered into for loving reasons—to extend and expand, to give and to grow, to bless and be blessed.

I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world. —Albert Einstein

If you don’t like being a doormat, then get off the floor. AL-ANON

It’s easy to enjoy each other while on a vacation in Maui. The key is to find someone you can have fun with during the six-hour flight over there. —Tom Arnold

We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thought. With our thoughts we make the world. —The Dhammapada

Tolerating the void is not for the faint of heart. It’s for the warriors, those ready to do battle with those fears that might speak up, if given half the chance. Whether you are seeking a greater sense of meaning in your life, have difficulty saying no, or are simply inspired and enthusiastic about life, you may need to let some things go. We all must master the ability to release who we are for the possibility of who we might become. As the saying goes, “In order to fly, you have to give up the ground you are standing on.

Most of us are living as though life were happening to us rather than through us. We are not present to the fact that we are constantly generating our lives, as though they were great works of art. The tools we are given from which to create are our thoughts, beliefs, assumptions, actions, decisions, and words. Love is letting go of fear. —Gerald Jampolsky

So much that was beautiful and so much that was hard to bear. Yet whenever I showed myself ready to bear it, the hard was directly transformed into the beautiful. ETTY HILLESUM

Whenever you are pointing your finger at someone, notice that there are always three fingers pointing back at you. —Anonymous

The truth is, we simply cannot continue to invest our energies in our neuroses, our dramas, our resentments, and our fears and think that we are a space for love.

Love is the wrecking ball that is pulverizing every relationship of record that isn’t wide enough or brave enough to let real love in. —Daphne Rose Kingma

Anger begs us to make a powerful commitment to what we will or will not tolerate in our lives any longer, making it our best friend if we can turn it in the right direction.

And you don’t have to be perfect before, during, or after doing this course. Just stay authentic and risk telling the truth—first to yourself and then to others, because that’s where the healing happens.

Like a great athlete, we must have a very clear vision of what we want to accomplish before we make a move. Vision, in preparation for an action, is as important as the action itself. —Marianne Williamson, Healing the Soul

In a nutshell, a breakup is nothing short of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to have a complete spiritual awakening. One that catapults you to a whole new level of authenticity, compassion, wisdom, depth, and—dare I say it?—even joy.

Now imagine what a relationship with “The One” might feel like. Don’t try to picture what your partner looks like or who they are in the world. Instead, try to imagine what it might feel like to actually have this relationship. Imagine this person sitting in front of you, breathing in unison with your breath, his heart beating in unison with your heartbeat. Imagine laughing freely, crying freely, and telling him a secret about yourself, knowing that you will not be judged but only valued and loved. Imagine what it is like to know that you are this safe, this appreciated, and this cherished. This is what you are looking for. This is what you are opening yourself to.

Our soulmates seldom appeal to our personality—our ego. That’s why they are called soulmates rather than egomates. —Carolyn G. Miller, Soulmates

Even after all this time, the sun never says to the earth “You owe me.” Look what happens with a love like that. It lights the whole sky.

For love, by definition, happens when it is safe to be flawed in the presence of another. Think

Listening is love in action.

All of our suffering in life is from saying we want one thing and doing another. —Debbie Ford

My barn having burned to the ground, I can now see the moon.

One may not reach the dawn save by the path of the night. —Kahlil Gibran

Soulful marriages are often odd on the surface. —Thomas Moore

The definition of a premise is something that is to be taken without the need for proof.

I am connected to everyone and everything.

Allow yourself to undertake this journey exactly as you are. Be free to be your imperfect, messy, unenlightened self as well as your magnificent, extraordinary, fabulous self.

When human relationships fail . . . they fail because they were entered into for the wrong reason. —Neale Donald Walsch, Conversations with God, Book 1

I open myself fully to give and receive love.

Don't let your fear of making a mistake dictate your chances for love. Remind yourself that at least one good thing came out of every mistake you've ever made.

Before I built a wall I’d ask to know What I was walling in or walling out. ROBERT FROST

You can live your life out of circumstance or you can live your life out of a vision. WERNER ERHARD

The future is not there waiting for us. We create it by the power of imagination. —Pir Vilayat Khan

Feel the feelings. Drop the story. PEMA CHODRON

We are never lonely because we have lost contact with others. We are lonely because we have lost contact with ourselves.

…you are deeply loved by all of life. …you have the power to keep yourself safe. …no one knows more than you what’s right for your life.

ASK YOURSELF: “What commitments do I wish my former partner had made to me that I can now make to myself?

We must remember that loneliness is not the real enemy - alienation from ourselves is. We are never lonely because we have lost contact with others. We are lonely because we have lost contact with ourselves.

To give up having to be right, having to prove someone else wrong, having to have the last word, having to be understood - that is the mark of a person who is capable and truly ready to create a loving relationship that will last and flourish over time.

For learning to live happily even after, finding a way to forgive the unforgivable, and to move forward in life graciously with hope in our hearts and goodwill in our gestures and in our words, may very well be the essence of what it is to truly love each other.

Magazines and talk shows are filled with people who say that a successful marriage is hard and requires a lot of work. But to soulmates, their harmony often feels effortless, as though it is the most natural thing in the world to be completely at ease in a relationship. —Rosemary Ellen Guiley

And while your new life may look little like the one you left behind, your goal is not to try to create a better version of what you once had, but to expand what’s now possible to include fresh new horizons, friends, and interests—and the exploration of forgotten, yet promising possibilities.

You cannot do this course effectively on the level of intellect. In other words, while it’s fine to read through the course before going back to actually do the practices, I can promise you authentic movement in your life only to the extent that you are willing to do the course and not just read the course.

We don't try to force things to go the way we think they should. We give up trying to fit square pegs into round holes. Instead, we yield ourselves, trusting that, even if we do not like what we hear, we are safe to surrender to the larger context of our lives, trusting ultimately that all is well. Herein lies inner peace.

I call it your source-fracture wound, the original break in your heart from long ago. It may have happened in an instant--a little rejection, a shocking abandonment, or a slight misattunement that suddenly made you realize how alone you were in this world. Or perhaps it was a bit-bu-bit splintering as over the years you met with an intermittent meanness, an unpredictable but repetitive abuse, or a neglect that stole your childhood inches at a time. Wherever, however, or whenever it happened, one thing we can assume is that no adult helped you make accurate meaning of your confusing and painful experience. No grown up sat you down and lovingly said, "No, honey, it's not that you're stupid. It's that your big brother is scared and insecure." "It's not that you don't matter, angel. It's that Daddy has a drinking problem and needs help." "It's not that you're not enough. It's that Mommy has clinical depression, dear, and it's neither your fault nor yours to fix." Without this mature presence to help explain to you what was happening to your little world, you probably came to some pretty strong and wrong conclusions about who you were and what was possible for you to have in life. And those conclusions became a habit of consciousness, a filter through which you interpret and then respond to the events of your life, making your grief all the more complex.

THIS COURSE There is a huge chasm between wanting to find your ideal partner and being truly available for that partner when he or she appears. This course is about bridging that chasm. It shows you how to set a strong intention to love and be loved, then outlines in clear, specific steps what you can do to make your intention become a reality.

Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. If I love

Katherine Woodward Thomas (2004) writes, “What you have is a reflection of what you believe you can have, and your relationships are a prefect mirror of your relationship to yourself”.

I don’t know that we ever ‘get rid’ of our woundedness. Our wounding experiences are a part of our history. We can, however, give up defining ourselves by what happened to us in the past. We can stop identifying ourselves with the pain that we have suffered. This is not a denial of what we’ve been through but, rather, an awareness that the essence of who we are is far, far beyond it.

Those who hurt you in the past have no authority to determine whether or not you will live a life of love and fulfillment. You are the only one holding that power.

Life is an ever-emerging creative process. Our thoughts, beliefs, assumptions, choices, actions, and words are the tools we use to invent our experiences and our circumstances.

Our brains much prefer it when we’re able to predict the future with accuracy, and so we’re inclined to create cultural stories and patterns that allow us to do that. Living happily ever after is one such collective pattern that grants us a sense of predictability and certainty in life and holds the standard for societal harmony.

Expectation has been called “the root of all heartache,” and certainly, failed expectations are often the root of deep confusion and inner chaos, as well.

Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host. But anger is like fire. It burns it all clean. MAYA ANGELOU

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Failure is just another way to learn how to do something right. MARIAN WRIGHT EDELMAN

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the human potential movement, as it encourages us to be undeterred by our current life conditions, to nobly strive toward the possibilities of an abundant and flourishing life, no matter what evidence we might be experiencing to the contrary.

a Conscious Uncoupling is a breakup or divorce that is characterized by a tremendous amount of goodwill, generosity, and respect, where those separating strive to do minimal damage to themselves, to each other, and to their children (if they have any), as well as intentionally seek to create new agreements and structures designed to set everyone up to win, flourish, and thrive moving forward in life.

Getting over a painful experience is much like crossing monkey bars. You have to let go at some point in order to move forward. C. S. LEWIS

Effective grieving, however, turns the love you’ve been giving another toward yourself.

Love exists to the extent that you give it away.

True love feels perfectly safe to explore and admit one's weaknesses, because doing so is not an admission that one is bad or inferior in any way.

When you seek to know all of the answers, your life then becomes limited by that which you already know. When you seek to ask deep and relevant questions, your life is only limited by the extent of your courage and willingness to learn and to try something new.

Taking risks means that you are willing to take actions that are outside of your confort zone. It means living life in a way that allows you, even challenges you, to expand yourself beyond who you know yourself to be.

To give up having to be right, having to prove someone else wrong, having to have the last word, having to be understood—that is the mark of a person who is ready to create a loving relationship that can last and flourish over time.

The older you grow, the more you realize that one half of you can firmly believe what the other half equally firmly refuses. CONSTANCE HOLME

There are a million little ways that a marriage grows apart, most too mundane to mention. Yet what happened to Mark and me, in a nutshell, is that I changed. And I mean, I radically and in many ways quite unfairly, changed. It’s kind of an occupational hazard—the downside of being a teacher

The end of love is a crossroads, and there will be those who go on to live lesser lives in the aftermath of heartbreak. My hope is that you are not one of them.

I encourage you, therefore, to hold your imperfections tenderly. Value the learning of life lessons as an important part of becoming a wise and mature human being.

every exit is an entry,

If it lasts, then it’s real. If it doesn’t, then it wasn’t. Either that, or someone screwed it up really badly.

can begin tending to the soft spots of your own tender heart, causing a bittersweet breakthrough in your ability to love yourself even when someone else refuses to. When you use the sheer force of your sorrow to crack open your heart, it promises to drop you down into a deeper capacity for compassion and care for all living beings. You become initiated into your own humanity

I define a “spiritual” person not as one who believes in a particular doctrine or religion, but rather as one who is actively pursuing the qualities of character that constitute a life of goodness and love.

Much of the horror of a breakup is the insult to our expectations of how this story was supposed to unfold versus how it actually did.

When Things Fall Apart,

It’s time for you to give yourself the love, attention, loyalty, and care you’ve been trying to get from others your whole life. Grief has you gripped tightly by the ankles, and she may not let you go too soon. There’s nowhere to go but home to yourself. This simple gesture of giving yourself your full attention when sorrow is shaking you to the bone promises to carve depth and kindness into the core of who you are—more than anything else I know.

Although we tend to believe that happiness exists as some sort of side benefit to having successfully mastered all the particulars of our lives, nothing could be further from the truth. Call it the biggest lie of all time, which we’ve bought hook, line, and sinker. We’re not unhappy because we don’t have enough of what we think that we want. We are unhappy because we are resisting what is so in our lives and are frantically caught up in trying to fix something that we perceive to be broken. That’s an awful lot of pressure.

What makes life worth living is being actively engaged in becoming the finest, most delicious human being you can possibly be in this lifetime.

And then one day the sadness was gone. In its place was a sense of peace and stillness. I still wasn’t thrilled to be single and alone, but ultimately, I was OK with it because I was OK with me. Today,

What we found is that when people [are] excluded, you see activity in…the neural regions [of the brain] that are also involved in the distressing component of pain, or what sometimes people call the ‘suffering component’ of pain.

Social rejection—or the feeling of not belonging, of being less than others, unwanted, and an outcast—activates the same brain regions as physical pain.

In the course of my life, I have often had to eat my words, and I must confess that I have always found it a wholesome diet. WINSTON CHURCHILL

Grief does not change you. It reveals you. JOHN GREEN

You must go back to rescue the younger you from that wacky and distorted hall of mirrors. Because the meaning you made about yourself and your life—that you are bad, not wanted, not loved, too much, not enough, powerless, and/or destined to be alone in life—is simply not true.

and strength

leaving each other, and all those impacted by our separation, whole, healthy, and complete rather than wounded, walled off, and significantly broken by the experience.

You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them. MAYA ANGELOU

You have to consciously create the possibility of an affirmative future while coming to terms with the painful loss of the future you’d envisioned

This being human is a guest house. Every morning a new arrival. A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor…. Be grateful for whatever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond. RUMI

What’s waking up in me as a result of my rage? How can I use the intensity of this energy to fuel positive change in my life? What rights am I now willing to stand up for?

When you’re willing to be with your experience, simply naming your feelings and needs without frantically trying to get rid of them, you’re practicing what Buddhists call “mindfulness.” It is neither passive nor active, but a deep honoring of your own humanity as you come to terms with the vulnerabilities of having a heart that loves.

to expect more of my primary partnership than staying together for the sake of the children