reine

“Responsibility is the cornerstone of awakening. Essentially, what responsibility is, is owning your own life. To become responsible is to step into this ability and chose to both create and respond to your life instead of to passively react to it as if it is happening to you. It is stepping into authority over yourself.”

Teal Swan (1984) American spiritual teacher

“To truly listen for intuition means to listen with all of your senses. You may hear the answer, or see the answer. You may just "know" the answer. You may get a physical sensation such as a chill or hot flash or feel the answer emotionally.”

Teal Swan (1984) American spiritual teacher

“Complaint is in fact a form of manipulation. We're trying to get our need met in an indirect way. That need being for our pain to be seen and heard and felt and acknowledged and validated. We are too scared to just flat out ask for someone to do this. But we need to get that it is much less off-putting to flat out ask someone for this need to be met than it is to complain near them so as to try to covertly get this out of them.”

Teal Swan (1984) American spiritual teacher

“Manipulation is what we do when we feel we cannot meet our needs directly, so instead we try to meet them in round about ways. We try to influence others to do what we want them to do so our needs are met. This is particularly prevalent today when the need that is not met is emotional.”

Teal Swan (1984) American spiritual teacher

“If we keep considering certifications to be the validation for an individual's success, we will end up with no original thought.”

Teal Swan (1984) American spiritual teacher

“Your spirit is an artist… It paints with thoughts.”

Teal Swan (1984) American spiritual teacher

“Start to see the things people say and do to you as less about you and more of a perfect reflection of the tragic relationship that they have with themselves.”

Teal Swan (1984) American spiritual teacher

“Every day in your lives, you are causing the expansion of yourself as well as the collective with your thought. And yet you still believe not in your perfection but instead in your unworthiness.”

Teal Swan (1984) American spiritual teacher

“If we associate love with losing ourselves, in relationships we will become avoidant and push our partners away.”

Teal Swan (1984) American spiritual teacher

“We have become increasingly more and more isolated. When we used to live in tribe and then community, and then even with extended family, we had multiple people to go to for help regarding how to deal with stressors. If we couldn't get connection from one person, we could find someone else to connect with. That is not the case today.”

Teal Swan (1984) American spiritual teacher

“The new earth does not belong to men and it does not belong to women. It is a co-creation that depends on divine feminine and divine masculine both coming into their full respective power.”

Teal Swan (1984) American spiritual teacher

“Depression is about feeling completely powerless and really angry at yourself because you're powerless.”

Teal Swan (1984) American spiritual teacher

“The way out of our negative emotions is into our negative emotions. The way out of our illusions is into our illusions. The way out of our suffering is into our suffering.”

Teal Swan (1984) American spiritual teacher

“There is no such thing as a bad kid, there is only ever unfulfilled needs that create the behaviors in a kid which we consider bad.”

Teal Swan (1984) American spiritual teacher

“You deserve a relationship where your feelings matter. And the fastest way to get to that relationship is to decide that your emotions, including your positive emotions, matter to you. And your positive emotions should matter to you enough that you are willing to follow them in whatever direction they wish to take you.”

Teal Swan (1984) American spiritual teacher

“Never be ashamed of how you feel. If you feel shame because of how you feel, it means you have been judged by others and told that your feelings were wrong or bad. But the reality is you wouldn't be feeling them if there wasn't a very valid reason to be feeling them. Your feelings are valid. If you feel an emotion, there is a good reason that you are feeling that emotion. Don't let anyone tell you how you should or shouldn't feel.”

Teal Swan (1984) American spiritual teacher

“We invalidate and desensitize our children when we try to make them feel better instead of helping them to feel like it is valid and ok to feel exactly how they feel. We do an immense disservice when we teach them by doing this to resist their own negative emotions. Anything we resist persists, and so we trap our children in their negative emotions when we try to help them avoid negative emotion by showing them how to run in the direction of positive emotion. We need to validate (mirror) their feelings and allow them to befriend the way they feel entirely before any action is taken to improve a situation or the way they feel.”

Teal Swan (1984) American spiritual teacher

“You deserve a relationship where your feelings matter. And the fastest way to get to that kind of relationship is to decide that your emotions matter to YOU. If you stop abandoning yourself when you are experiencing negative emotions, you will come to trust that you will always be there for yourself. You will feel a deep sense of inner peace arise within you.”

Teal Swan (1984) American spiritual teacher

“Because we have learned that our parents and other people cannot accept our emotions, thoughts and desires and we cannot tolerate them in that situation, we learn to disconnect from our personal truth as well. This includes disconnecting from our feelings so we don't feel them. This includes disconnecting from our thoughts so we aren't thinking them. It means disconnecting from our bodies so we don't feel our bodies and it involves disconnecting from our personal desires.”

Teal Swan (1984) American spiritual teacher