Jean Shinoda Bolen Quotes & Sayings

I believe that the thought that women together can change the world is emerging into the minds and hearts of many of us, and that the vessel for personal and planetary evolution is the circle with a spiritual center. — Jean Shinoda Bolen

I think that whenever soul is present, it's because what you're doing, whom you're with, where you are, evokes love without your thinking about it. You are totally absorbed in the place of person or event, without ego and without judgment. — Jean Shinoda Bolen

Over the years I have come to believe that life is full of unchosen circumstances, that being human has to do with the evolution of our individual consciousness and with it, responsibilities for choice. Pain and joy both come with life. I believe that how we respond to what happens to us and around us shapes who we become and has to do with the psyche or the soul's growth. — Jean Shinoda Bolen

To voice something you're feeling and put observations into words with another person who is totally present is a creative act embodying soul and love. — Jean Shinoda Bolen

At your most daring moments you believe that what is going on is the ultimate human work the shaping of a soul. The power of life comes from within; go there; pray; meditate. Reach for those luminous places in yourself. — Jean Shinoda Bolen

What particular experiences will nourish your soul? No one can prescribe that for you; it is something only you can know and experience. What is satisfying for one person may be just the opposite for someone else. Being out in nature, by the seashore, or on a mountaintop works for me. Communing with nature brings me into soul time. But for others, being out in nature is something to be tolerated, or even an ordeal, or just what you do if you're a member of a family that goes camping. — Jean Shinoda Bolen

Women in the world will have been beaten or raped in their lifetime and everyday violence requires that women always be alert to this possibility. A crone is a woman who has found her voice. She knows that silence is consent. This is a quality that makes older women feared. It is not the innocent voice of a child who says, "the emperor has no clothes," but the fierce truthfulness of the crone that is the voice of reality. Both the innocent child and the crone are seeing through the illusions, denials, or "spin" to the truth. But the crone knows about the deception and its consequences, and it angers her. Her fierceness springs from the heart, gives her courage, makes her a force to be reckoned with. — Jean Shinoda Bolen

To know how to choose a path with heart is to learn how to follow
intuitive feeling. Logic can tell you superficially where a path might
lead to, but it cannot judge whether your heart will be in it. — Jean Shinoda Bolen

When you recover or discover something that nourishes your soul and brings joy, care enough about yourself to make room for it in your life. — Jean Shinoda Bolen

When we enter a forest phase in our lives we enter a period of wandering and a time of potential soul growth. Here it is possible to find what we have cut off from, to "remember" a once vital aspect of ourselves. We may uncover a wellspring of creativity that has been hidden for decades. — Jean Shinoda Bolen

I think people don't place a high enough value on how much they are nurtured by doing whatever it is that totally absorbs them. — Jean Shinoda Bolen

We need to meditate on what is peaceful. Once we have 'filled up' in this way, we once again have an abundance of love to send out into the world. — Jean Shinoda Bolen

Here we are, women who have been the beneficiaries of education, resources, reproductive choices, travel opportunities, the Internet, and a longer life expectancy than women have ever had in history.
What can and will we do? — Jean Shinoda Bolen

As I experience it, appreciation of beauty is access to the soul. With beauty in our lives, we walk and carry ourselves more lightly and with a different look in our eyes. To look into the eyes of someone beholding beauty is to look through the windows of the soul. Anytime we catch a glimpse of soul, beauty is there; anytime we catch our breath and feel "How beautiful!," the soul is present. — Jean Shinoda Bolen

I feel that one must deliberate then act, must scan every life choice with rational thinking but then base the decision on whether one's heart will be in it. — Jean Shinoda Bolen

The goddess Artemis had a twin brother, Apollo, the many-faceted god of the Sun. He was her male counterpart: his domain was the city, hers the wilderness; his was the sun, hers the moon; his the domesticated flocks, hers the wild, untamed animals; he was the god of music, she was the inspiration for round dances on the mountains. — Jean Shinoda Bolen

Syncronistic meetings are like mirrors that reflect something of ourselves. If we want to grow spiritually, all we have to do is take a good look. Synchronicity holds the promise that if we want to change inside, the patterns of our external life will change as well. — Jean Shinoda Bolen

Before you can do something that you've never done, you have to be able to imagine it is possible. — Jean Shinoda Bolen

Bliss and joy come in moments of living our highest truth
moments when what we do is consistent with our archetypal depths. It's when we are most authentic and trusting, and feel that whatever we are doing, which can be quite ordinary, is nonetheless sacred. — Jean Shinoda Bolen

We usually do pay attention to our outer appearance, typically noticing whatever part of our bodies we are unhappy about. It behooves us, however, to get on very good terms with more than just the surface of our bodies as we grow older; for if we don't listen to our bodies and pay attention to our physical needs and pleasures, this vehicle that we need to be running well to take us into a long and comfortable life, will limit what we can do and who we become. — Jean Shinoda Bolen

Insights from myth, dreams, and intuitions, from glimpses of an invisible reality, and from perennial human wisdom provide us with hints and guesses about the meaning of life and what we are here for. Prayer, observance, discipline, thought and action are the means through which we grow and find meaning. — Jean Shinoda Bolen

I move through my day-to-day life with a sense of appreciation and gratitude that comes from knowing how fortunate I truly am and how unearned all that I am thankful for really is. To have this perspective in my everyday consciousness is in itself a gift, for it leads to feeling "graced," or blessed, each time ... Every time I see beauty around me I appreciate what I am seeing, and simultaneously I have this sense of appreciation-for being alive to have this particular moment. — Jean Shinoda Bolen

Synchronicity holds the promise that if we will change within, the patterns in our outer life will change also. — Jean Shinoda Bolen

Synchronistic events offer us perceptions that may be useful in our psychological and spiritual growth and may reveal to us, through intuitive knowledge, that our lives have meaning. — Jean Shinoda Bolen

Life presents us with repeated opportunities to face what we fear, what we need to become conscious of, or what we need to master. — Jean Shinoda Bolen

Moisture and greeness have to do with innocence, love, heart, feelings and tears. All of the [fluids] in our body become moist when we are moved-we cry, we lubricate, we bleed, all of the numinous experiences of our bodies have to do with moisture. And it's moisture that brings life to this planet, that is the cure for the desert experience and the cure for aridness. — Jean Shinoda Bolen

You have the need and the right to spend part of your life caring for your soul. It is not easy. You have to resist the demands of the work-oriented, often defensive, element in your psyche that measures life only in terms of output - how much you produce - not in terms of the quality of your life experiences. To be a soulful person means to go against all the pervasive, prove-yourself values of our culture and instead treasure what is unique and internal and valuable in yourself and your own personal evolution. — Jean Shinoda Bolen

There is a potential heroine in every woman. — Jean Shinoda Bolen

While everyone has a different experience of what is soulful, these experiences do share similar beginnings. We start by giving ourselves permission to be soulful, to take seriously this aspect of ourselves, our soul and our soul needs. — Jean Shinoda Bolen

Whenever I experience something beautiful, I am with Soul. That moment of inward breath, that pause and awareness of "how beautiful this is" is a prayer of appreciation, a moment of gratitude in which I behold beauty and am one with it. — Jean Shinoda Bolen