Redfield Quotes & Sayings

I compare myself with my former self, not with others. Not only that, I tend to compare my current self with the best I have been, which is when I have been midly manic. When I am my present "normal" self, I am far removed from when I have been my liveliest, most productive, most intense, most outgoing and effervescent. In sort, for myself, I am a hard act to follow. — Kay Redfield Jamison

Each of us has a gift, a talent, that we can offer to the world that makes the world essentially a better place. — James Redfield

It took me far too long to realize that lost years and relationships cannot be recovered. That damage done to oneself and others cannot always be put right again. — Kay Redfield Jamison

We all have times that we get off center. — James Redfield

Normal people are not always boring. On the contrary. Volatility and passion, although often more romantic and enticing, are not intrinsically preferable to a steadiness of experience and feeling about another person (nor are they incompatible). These are beliefs, of course, that one has intuitively about friendships and family; they become less obvious when caught up in a romantic life that mirrors, magnifies, and perpetuates one's own mercurial emotional life and temperament. It has been with my pleasure, and not-inconsiderable pain, that I have learned about the possibilities of love - its steadiness and its growth - from my husband, the man with whom I had lived for almost a decade. — Kay Redfield Jamison

I look back over my shoulder and feel the presence of an intense young girl and then a volatile and disturbed young woman, both with high dreams and restless, romantic aspirations — Kay Redfield Jamison

I wish I could explain it so someone could understand it. I'm afraid it's something I can't put into words. There's just this heavy, overwhelming despair - dreading everything. Dreading life. Empty inside, to the point of numbness. It's like there's something already dead inside. My whole being has been pulling back into that void for months. (81) — Kay Redfield Jamison

Moods are complicated and very much a part of who we are. People would be very boring without them. — Kay Redfield Jamison

Remember to stop as often as necessary to re-connect your energy. Stay full, stay in a state of love. Remember that once you achieve the state of love, nothing nor anyone can pull more energy from you that you can replace. In fact, the energy flowing out of you creates a current that pulls energy into you at the same rate. You can never run out. But you must stay conscious of this process in order for it to work. This is especially important when you interact with people. — James Redfield

We all build internal sea walls to keep at bay the sadnesses of life and the often overwhelming forces within our minds. In whatever way we do this
through love, work, family, faith, friends, denial, alcohol, drugs, or medication, we build these walls, stone by stone, over a lifetime. — Kay Redfield Jamison

I, quite literally, woke up from a coma, from having tried to kill myself and it was very clear to me what my psychiatrist had been saying for years. The choice is not between a drug that has side effects or not, life is not ideal. Yes, your drug has side effects and yes if you don't take it you're going to die. — Kay Redfield Jamison

was the housekeeper of more than just our home. Dr Redfield tried to assure me this wasn't the case, but not even she could convince me I was wrong. I glanced at my watch. We had ten minutes left. Ten minutes in which she'd want me to talk about something it hurt me to revisit. 'Is it possible to live with guilt?' I asked her, finally putting my mug down and clutching the strap of my bag instead. 'Even if every day it threatens to suffocate me? — Kathryn Croft

If the idea comes to you that — James Redfield

I realized that it was not that I didn't want to go on without him. I did. It was just that I didn't know why I wanted to go on — Kay Redfield Jamison

It is important to value intellect and discipline, of course, but it is also important to recognize the power of irrationality, enthusiasm and vast energy. — Kay Redfield Jamison

I have had manic-depressive illness, also known as bipolar disorder, since I was 18 years old. It is an illness that ensures that those who have it will experience a frightening, chaotic and emotional ride. It is not a gentle or easy disease. — Kay Redfield Jamison

I read it as if it had been written by someone else, although it was my own experience being recounted.

The endless questioning finally ended. My psychiatrist looked at me, there was no uncertainty in his voice. "Maniac-depressive illness." I admired his bluntness. I wished him locusts in his land and a pox upon his house. Silent, unbelievable rage. I smiled pleasantly. He smiled back. The war had just begun, — Kay Redfield Jamison

Prayer power is real. By putting it into action, we will be able to stay more constantly in higher awareness than ever before. If we can do that, the world will quickly change. — James Redfield

Once you learn what life is about, there is no way to erase that knowledge. If you try to do something else with your life, you will always sense that you are missing something — James Redfield

The First Insight Theory: Mysterious coincidences cause the reconsideration of the inherent mystery that surrounds our individual lives on this planet. — James Redfield

Religions become corrupted when leaders are assigned to explain God's will to people instead of showing them how to find this direction within themselves. — James Redfield

lost a great innocence when I understood that I and my mind were not going to be on good terms for the rest of my life. I can't tell you how tired I am of character-building experiences. But I treasure this part of me; whoever loves me loves me with this in it. — Kay Redfield Jamison

There is no common standard for education about diagnosis. Distinguishing between bipolar depression and major depressive disorder, for example, can be difficult, and mistakes are common. Misdiagnosis can be lethal. Medications that work well for some forms of depression induce agitation in others. — Kay Redfield Jamison

In a world where the people are numbed and distracted, the only thing that sells is the unbelievable. — James Redfield

If one can connect and build up enough energy, then coincidental events begin to happen consistently. — James Redfield

We are all capable of living lives characterized by great joy. Within each of us is an amazing human spirit that is strong enough to overcome pain and disappointment. And no matter what our current situation happens to be, or what beliefs we may currently harbor about ourselves, we can tap into that inner strength and wisdom and move forward to create more joy. — Salle Merrill Redfield

In True Balance Sonia Choquette takes the mystery out of staying balanced, both physically and spiritually. She offers a clear explanation of our chakras and how they influence our daily lives. — Salle Merrill Redfield

When love first happens, the individuals are giving each other energy unconsciously and both people feel buoyant and elated. That's the incredible high we call being 'in love.' Unfortunately, once they expect this feeling to come from another person, they cut themselves off from the energy in the universe and begin to rely even more on the energy from each other--only now there doesn't seem to be enough and so they stop giving each other energy and fall back into their dramas in an attempt to control each other and force the other's energy their way. — James Redfield

I am tired of hiding, tired of misspent and knotted energies, tired of the hypocrisy, and tired of acting as though I have something to hide. — Kay Redfield Jamison

Suicide is not a blot on anyone's name; it is a tragedy — Kay Redfield Jamison

Because I teach and write about depression and bipolar illness, I am often asked what is the most important factor in treating bipolar disorder. My answer is competence. Empathy is important, but competence is essential. — Kay Redfield Jamison

In its severe forms, depression paralyzes all of the otherwise vital forces that make us human, leaving instead a bleak, despairing, desperate, and deadened state ... Life is bloodless, pulseless, and yet present enough to allow a suffocating horror and pain. All bearings are lost; all things are dark and drained of feeling. The slippage into futility is first gradual, then utter. Thought, which is as pervasively affected by depression as mood, is morbid, confused, and stuporous. It is also vacillating, ruminative, indecisive, and self-castigating. The body is bone-weary; there is no will; nothing is that is not an effort, and nothing at all seems worth it. Sleep is fragmented, elusive, or all-consuming. Like an unstable, gas, an irritable exhaustion seeps into every crevice of thought and action. — Kay Redfield Jamison

Psychotherapy is a sanctuary; it is a battleground; it is a place I have been psychotic, neurotic, elated, confused, and despairing beyond belief. — Kay Redfield Jamison

He paused, thinking, so Dobson asked again that we sit — James Redfield

I didn't start a Celestine movement. — James Redfield

Violence, especially if you are a woman, is not something spoken about with ease. — Kay Redfield Jamison

But money spent while manic doesn't fit into the Internal Revenue Service concept of medical expense or business loss. So after mania, when most depressed, you're given excellent reason to be even more so. — Kay Redfield Jamison

We must intend to live [the new spiritual awareness], to integrate each increased degree of awareness into our daily routine. It only takes one negative interpretation to stop everything. — James Redfield

Everyone has good cause for suicide, or at least it seems that way to those who search for it. (74) — Kay Redfield Jamison

'An Unquiet Mind' wasn't hard to write in terms of the actual writing of it. — Kay Redfield Jamison

If you connect with a greater part of yourself, I call it higher self, but that's an experience, and when you do this, knowledge comes in, including intuition, and it's always about, 'What's my heart's sole desire?' — James Redfield

Love, like life, is much stranger and far more complicated than one is brought up to believe. — Kay Redfield Jamison

One of the advantages of science is that one's work, ultimately, is either replicated or it is not. — Kay Redfield Jamison

I was late to understand that chaos and intensity are no subsitute for lasting love, nor are they necessarily an improvement on real life. Normal people are not always boring. On the contrary. Volatility and passion, although often more romantic and enticing, are not intrinsically preferable to a steadiness of experience and feeling about another person. — Kay Redfield Jamison

We can increase the frequency of guiding coincidences by uplifting every person that comes into our lives. Care must be taken not to lose our inner connection in romantic relationships. — James Redfield

Where Attention goes Energy flows; Where Intention goes Energy flows! — James Redfield

Mother, who has an absolute belief that it is not the cards that one is dealt in life, it is how one plays them, is, by far, the highest card I was dealt. — Kay Redfield Jamison

Each way to suicide is its own: intensely private, unknowable, and terrible. Suicide will have seemed to its perpetrator the last and best of bad possibilities, and any attempt by the living to chart this final terrain of life can be only a sketch, maddeningly incomplete — Kay Redfield Jamison

I had been simply treating water, settling on surviving and avoiding pain rather than being actively involved in seeking out life. — Kay Redfield Jamison

We expect well-informed treatment for cancer or heart disease; it matters no less for depression. — Kay Redfield Jamison

I don't think that anything happens by coincidence ... No one is here by accident ... Everyone who crosses our path has a message for us. Otherwise they would have taken another path, or left earlier or later. The fact that these people are here means that they are here for some reason ... — James Redfield

How odd to smile during Richard's funeral. He was dead and I was smiling to myself. Grief does that. Laughter lies close in with despair, numbness near by acuity and memory with forgetfulness. I would have got used to it, but I didn't know this at the time. All I knew, was that memory had given pleasure first, then cracking pain. — Kay Redfield Jamison

The First Insight is an awareness of the mysterious occurrences that change one's life, the feeling that some other process is operating. — James Redfield

Setting a field for synchronicity is a matter of putting yourself in a particular state of mind. It is easy to think about synchronicity intellectually, but unless you enter the state of mind where your prayer-field will help, all you will do is glimpse the coincidences every once in a while. In some situations that is enough and you will be led forward for a time, but eventually you will lose your direction. The only way to establish a constant flow of synchronicity is to stay in a state where your prayer field keeps this flow moving toward you
a state of conscious alertness. — James Redfield

We humans have always sought to increase our personal energy in the only manner we have known, by seeking to psychologically steal it from the others
an unconscious competition that underlies all human conflict in the world. — James Redfield

It's not that they knew what you were doing exactly. They could feel what you were feeling, and as the lie you were contemplating brought you down, they felt that drain themselves, and thus became more confused and unclear---which was an unconscious signal to them that something was wrong, and that you were probably up to no good. So they backed away. — James Redfield

It never occurred to her to give up. — Kay Redfield Jamison

As best I could make out, having never heard the term until I arrived in California, being a WASP meant being mossbacked, lockjawed, rigid, humorless, cold, charmless, insipid, less than penetratingly bright, but otherwise
and inexplicably
to be envied. — Kay Redfield Jamison

The assumption that rigidly rejecting words and phrases that have existed for centuries will have much impact on public attitudes is rather dubious. — Kay Redfield Jamison

I have often asked myself whether, given the choice, I would choose to have manic-depressive illness. If lithium were not available to me, or didn't work for me, the answer would be a simple no ... and it would be an answer laced with terror. But lithium does work for me, and therefore I can afford to pose the question. Strangely enough, I think I would choose to have it. It's complicated ... — Kay Redfield Jamison

Time will pass; these mood will pass; and I will, eventually, be myself again. But then, at some unknown time, the electrifying carnival will come back into my mind. — Kay Redfield Jamison

The role of love has been misunderstood for a long time. Love is not something we should do to be good or to make the world a better place out of some abstract moral responsibility, or because we should give up our hedonism. Connecting with energy feels like excitement, then euphoria, and then love. Finding enough energy to maintain that state of love certainly helps the world, but it most directly helps us. It is the most hedonistic thing we can do. — James Redfield

Knowledge is marvelous, but wisdom is even better. — Kay Redfield Jamison

We humans always seem to take a manipulative posture. No matter what the particulars of the situation, or the subject matter, we prepare ourselves to say whatever we want in order to prevail in the conversation. Each of us seeks to find some way to control and thus to remain on top in the encounter. If we are successful, or our viewpoint prevails, then rather than feel weak, we receive a psychological boost. — James Redfield

Healing in its essence is about breaking through the fears associated with life - fears — James Redfield

The complexities of what we are given in life are vast and beyond comprehension. — Kay Redfield Jamison

The universe is energy, energy that responds to our expectations. — James Redfield

It was as if my father had given me, by way of temperament, an impossibly wild, dark, and unbroken horse. It was a horse without a name, and a horse with no experience of a bit between its teeth. My mother taught me to gentle it; gave me the discipline and love to break it; and- as Alexander had known so intuitively with Bucephalus- she understood, and taught me, that the beast was best handled by turning it toward the sun. — Kay Redfield Jamison

They used to treat sheep carcasses with Lithium so if the Coyotes went after the herd and bit on the treated carcasses, the got so sick they kept their teeth to themselves. — Kay Redfield Jamison

But, with time, one has encountered many of the monsters, and one is increasingly less terrified of those still to be met. — Kay Redfield Jamison

Where I once found it safer to stay in the background ... I've stepped from the shadows into the spotlight. — Salle Merrill Redfield

If history tells us anything, it is that human culture and knowledge are constantly evolving. — James Redfield

Learn to slow down and perceive the mysterious events and opportunities that happen in life ... if we look closely we see they ... bring us just the right information at just the right time ... — James Redfield

We can become inspired to shape a higher, more ideal future, and when we do, miracles happen. — James Redfield

The human perception of this energy first begins with a heightened sensitivity to beauty. — James Redfield

She realized how many of her beliefs were either unrealistic or belonged to her deceased parents and her ex-husband. She also realized that her expectations for herself and others were sometimes too rigid. She was trying to live up to what everyone else said was best for her, which made her depressed and hard to be around at times. Once she changed her beliefs about herself and others, she began to smile more and enjoy life. — Salle Merrill Redfield

The things that we preceive as beautiful may be different, but the actual characteristics we ascribe to beautiful objects are similar. Think about it. When something strikes us as beautiful, it displays more presence and sharpness of shape and vividness of color, doesn't it? It stands out. It shines. It seems almost iridescent compared to the dullness of other objects less attractive. — James Redfield

I believe that curiosity, wonder and passion are defining qualities of imaginative minds and great teachers; that restlessness and discontent are vital things; and that intense experience and suffering instruct us in ways that less intense emotions can never do. — Kay Redfield Jamison

I never again looked at the sky and saw only vastness and beauty. From that afternoon on I saw that death was also and always there. — Kay Redfield Jamison

The disease that has, on several occasions, nearly killed me does kill tens of thousands of people every year: most are young, most die unnecessarily, and many are among the most imaginative and gifted that we as a society have. — Kay Redfield Jamison

Seemed to myself to be dull, boring, inadequate, thick brained, unlit, unresponsive, chill skinned, bloodless, and sparrow drab. — Kay Redfield Jamison

Exuberance is a gift of grace that allows us to move on, to seek, to love again. — Kay Redfield Jamison

Wherever we are in life is where destiny has brought us. It doesn't mean we have to stay there. — James Redfield

After a while, the conversations became almost cordial. — James Redfield

Lithium prevents my seductive but disastrous highs, diminishes my depressions, clears out the wool and webbing from my disordered thinking, slows me down, gentles me out, keeps me from ruining my career and relationships, keeps me out of a hospital, alive, and makes psychotherapy possible. — Kay Redfield Jamison

Loving and energizing others is the best possible thing we can do for ourselves. — James Redfield

As we blossom or awaken, we begin to notice there is a force in the world that seems to be operating and leading us into a certain destiny. And it's very much a kind of detective effort on our own part to figure out what these things mean. The synchronicity is essentially a meaningful coincidence that brings us information at just the right time. While leading us forward, it also feels very inspiring and destined in a way. It feels like we're on a path of unfolding in our own personal evolution. — James Redfield

I am one of millions who have been treated for depression and gotten well; I was lucky enough to have a psychiatrist well versed in using lithium and knowledgeable about my illness, and who was also an excellent psychotherapist. — Kay Redfield Jamison

Who would not want an illness that has among its symptoms elevated and expansive mood, inflated self-esteem, abundance of energy, less need for sleep, intensified sexuality, and- most germane to our argument here-"sharpened and unusually creative thinking" and "increased productivity"? — Kay Redfield Jamison

A lot of people are simply interested in exploring their own spirituality, their own values, who they are, whether they're happy where they are. — James Redfield

What I need in order to stay creative and centered is a certain amount of distance from the maddening crowd. You cease to be your best self if you're running too fast. — James Redfield

Often, people want both to live and to die; ambivalence saturates the suicidal act. — Kay Redfield Jamison

The process of discovering who we are and what we are here to do ... is dependent ... on our ability to stay positive and to find a silver lining in all events. — James Redfield

It took my year in England to make me realize how much I had been simply treading water, settling on surviving and avoiding pain rather than being actively involved in and seeking out life. The chance to escape from the reminders of illness and death, from a hectic life, and from clinical and teaching responsibilities was not unlike my earlier year as an undergraduate in St. Andrews: it gave me a semblance of peace that had eluded me, and a place of my own to heal and mull, but most important to heal. England did not have the Celtic, magical quality of St. Andrews - nothing, I suppose, ever could for me - but it gave me back myself again, gave me back my high hopes of life. And it gave me back, my belief in love. — Kay Redfield Jamison

Love is the force, the energy that animates creativity and peace in each one of us. — Salle Merrill Redfield

There's a rich legend of this in other cultures, this speaking with ancestors. The Christian mystics communicated with angels. — James Redfield

Curiosity, wonder, and passion are defining qualities of imaginative minds and great teachers ... Restlessness and discontent are vital things ... Intense experience and suffering instruct us in ways less intense emotions can never do. — Kay Redfield Jamison

In some cases, some people do get depressed in the middle of their grief, and they really need to be treated for depression. — Kay Redfield Jamison

Like my father, I looked up rather more than I looked out. — Kay Redfield Jamison

Being with nature opens us up to divine experience. — James Redfield