Chaotic_equilibrium

There is a power that comes out of surrendering to grief and a power that is the result of refusing it. I think they are two very different types of power. The one that emerges through allowing grief feels clean, purged, and inclusive. You have experienced pain and grief so you would not want to inflict it on someone else. The kind of power that emerges through the denial of grief, or the resistance to grief is aggressive power. It is trying to conquer something, annihilate something, and overcome something. It emerges out of fear and a need to protect oneself from a feeling, which then becomes a country, a type of person, et cetera. It is inauthentic power. It is manufactured power in order to manipulate, bully, or deny. The central energy of this power is rooted in control or maintaining the illusion of control.  This power is based on pushing something away. The power is based on the belief that there are victims and perpetrators. Usually the person wielding the power believes he or she is the victim and that some person or many people are out to get him or her. To grieve would mean letting go of this position, letting go of the need for a position, and the need for strategy or defense, and be lost in the wave of grief. It would mean surrendering. -Eve Ensler

Putting positive energy out into the universe brings more back to you. Doing your best to help effect positive change can cause a chain reaction of good things, the ripples of which can reach out into places previously unimaginable. 

Freedom is wanting to win the award when I know awards mean nothing.

Freedom is not knowing where you are, but being deeply there.

Not waiting for someone to save or rescue you, or make up for your terrible past, but doing that for yourself. 

Not owning people or ideas. 

Being willing to get lost in the desert. 

Freedom is about becoming vulnerable to one another, rather than becoming secure, in control, and alone. 

The increasing insecurity of the world can make us insane or can simply clarify reality, which is that we are going to die and it could happen anytime and anywhere. The world is indeed a near-death experience, forcing us, if we let it, to let go of certain illusions that separate us from one another. 

-Eve Ensler

“Freedom is not only being able to tolerate mystery, complexity, and ambiguity, but hungering for them and only trusting a situation when they are present. “-Eve Ensler

Security

We have all been wrongly manipulated and misguided to believe that we are longing for security, when in reality it is kindness we are after. We are taught instead that it is about money, power, privilege, and security. How harsh this hunt for security makes us, how cruel. It teaches us to take care for ourselves, our own… not to go too far out, not to go outside a certain circle. 

-Eve Ensler

Freedom

Freedom can come only from contemplating death, not from pretending that it doesn’t exist. Not from running from loss but from entering grief, surrendering to sorrow. Freedom comes not from holding your life more precious or sacred than others. Not from consuming more than your share. Freedom is not knowing something when you don’t know it. Freedom means I may not be identified with any one group, but I can visit and find myself in every group. Freedom does not mean I don’t have values or beliefs, but it does mean that I am not hardened around them. I do not use my values  as weapons. 

-Eve Ensler