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“You cannot create experience. You must undergo it” (Great Work quote)

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“You cannot create experience. You must undergo it.”
~ Albert Camus

One phrase I use regularly is “wisdom enters through the wound.” It’s shamanic in origin, and I love the liberating sense that it is only through our bruises and scrapes and errors and mistakes and stumbles and confusions and hurts and tears and anxiety and wounds, it is only through the time we spend in the shadow that our wisdom grows.

Seek out experience and stumble.

(Seth has a great post on this too.)

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Posted on April 19, 2010
Posted in self-management | Tagged , , , , ,

4 Responses to “You cannot create experience. You must undergo it” (Great Work quote)

  1. Annie Stith (Gr8fulAS on Twitter) says:
    April 19, 2010 at 9:48 am

    Oh, absolutely!

    I had some large wounds from when I was a kid that formed most of my personality, including my desire to help others who have also been deeply wounded.

    We have to be careful, tho, not to keep probing a wound *so* much that it’s not allowed to heal, and our final lesson from the experience can’t be learned.

    Annie

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  4. Elizabeth Ellis says:
    January 24, 2011 at 11:12 am

    Love this Michael, thank you.
    Our ability to touch the pain and be with all of our experiences, past and present with love and compassion for who we were and who we are is transformational. When we choose to disassociate ourselves with our experience we are left in pieces. So many of us are drawn to healing, making a difference with others, and creating a more whole, connected, and loving world, yet we resist our own inner world carrying the wounds forward which limit our ability to really give fully- from a place of wholeness. As we increase our ability to shine the light on our own wounds we increase our ability to truly be in relationship with ourselves, others, and the world.