Laura Huxley Quotes

It is feeling the energy, becoming conscious of it, that permits us to redirect it according to the best of our physical, intellectual, and ethical knowledge.

Our task is to find ways in which the energy evoked by negative emotions can be transformed, in a manner compatible with civilized living, into harmless-or better-into positively useful energy. Our purpose, then, is to become expert and voluntary energy transformers instead of involuntary energy victims. Like everything else, this takes practice.

For this purpose it is necessary to keep in sharp focus a fact of which often we are not aware: we are at all times a connecting link, one of many links, in a chain reaction of related events. Each of us is the product of many chains: the evolutionary chain, the racial chain, the genetic chain, the environmental chain, and many others. The immense mass of events of which we are alternately the cause and the effect surpasses the human imagination.

War is the most terrifying example of energy directed against ourselves, and yet it was a great relief for many people throughout history. War provided them with a legitimate outlet for their aggressive feelings and an escape from their boredom. Even the humblest factory job acquired a glow of righteousness and patriotism. It is sadly significant that the number of suicides always declines during a war. A nuclear war would provide none of the satisfactions of past wars-no marching, no brass bands, no heroism. Like termites fumigated in their nests, we would all be exterminated, on any side of any curtain, by a stupendous gadget paid for by our hard-earned money and of which we were supposed to be proud. This gadget is the most powerful of all man-made transformers of energy.

In all its manifestations and however it is produced, not-love tends to beget not-love. The energy of love is needed to reconvert not-love into love.

Love starvation may camouflage itself in physical and mental ills, in delinquency, sometimes in death. In a family, love starvation begets love starvation in one generation after another until a rebel in that family breaks the malevolent chain. If you find yourself in such a family, BE THAT REBEL!

Disguised in a thousand forms, hidden under an infinite variety of masks, love starvation is even more rampant than food starvation. It invades all classes and all peoples. It occurs in all climates, on every social and economic level. It seems to occur in all forms of life. Love starvation wears the stony face of the disciplinarian or speaks in the hysterical voice of the zealot. It puts on the unctuous manner of the hypocrite or the ruthlessness of the ambitious power-seeker.

Let us initiate a change in ourselves, for then, and then only, shall we be able to effect a change in other people. When we change, others change too. And circumstances change in a manner that is almost miraculous. The initial change has to come from inside ourselves.

Our creative potential has many aspects, but undoubtedly the most important one is to make good use of ourselves and what we are here and now, at each successive moment.

There are almost as many ways of helping people to feel better as there are human beings.

At one time or another the more fortunate among us make three startling discoveries. Discovery number one: Each one of us has, in varying degree, the power to make others feel better or worse. Discovery number two: Making others feel better is much more rewarding than making them feel worse. Discovery number three: Making others feel better generally makes us feel better.