HOW TO LIVE BETWEEN OFFICE VISITS by Dr. BERNIE SIEGEL

This is a helpful little book and is designed for people who have very serious life threatening illnesses. Dr. Siegel's earlier books are more important contributions to knowledge, however, this book is the kind that you can readily recommend to a client to take home and read. Also, it is of value to anyone, not just to those who may be suffering from a major illness. All the following are quotes from and/or quotes used in the book:

So Faith, Hope and Love abide; but the greatest of these is Love.    I Corinthians 13

For the person and for the species love is the form of behavior having the highest survival value. Ashley Montagu

"I think that within each of us is a knowledge of our road, or path. It is intuitive. And yet we so often give it up and don't live our own life but the life that someone else has chosen for us" (p. xv).

"I've always felt that life and nature give us signs when we are on the right path. When we find our way of contributing love to the world, we are in harmony with the world" (p. xv).

This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap...George Bernard Shaw,  Epistle Dedicatory to MAN AND SUPERMAN

I don't want to be saved, I want to be spent.          Fritz Perls

"I love to use this exercise at workshops, and now I ask you: What would you write about if you knew you had only six months to live? What would you want to share with others, to get in touch with feelings that lie deep inside you? When we do this we all begin to focus on what we love best. Stop; close your eyes. In the darkness you may lose your sight and develop insight. Helen Keller often asked this question of people: 'If you had three days to see, what would you choose to see in those days?' I think that your choice will teach you about what you truly love in your life" (p. 27).

"An unhealthy addiction may have started out being something healthy. I know people who have started to jog because it's good for them and it feels good to exercise. But the next thing you know they're preparing for marathons, compulsively training for hours a day, disrupting their lives. This is unhealthy.

"Addictions---and this can include taking drugs, making money, exercising for hours a day and a whole host of other things---can be seen as means of trying to gain love and feelings that should come in healthier ways. They are really replacements for the love we wish we had. We couldn't control the source of love when we were children, and we try to do it now" (p. 28).

"In his book THE DIRECTION OF HUMAN DEVELOPMENT, Ashley Montagu says: 'Love implies the possession of a feeling of deep involvement in another, and to love means to communicate that feeling of involvement to him. Love is unconditional, it makes no bargains and it trades with no one for anything. Love is supportive. Love is firm. Love is most needed by the human organism from the moment of birth. Love is reciprocal in its effect and is as beneficial to the giver as it is to the recipient. Love is creative. Love enlarges the capacities of those who are loved...

Love is tender.

Love is joyful.

Love is fearless.

Love enables the person to treat life as an art.

Love as an attitude of mind and as a form of behavior is adaptively the best and most efficient of all adjustive processes in enabling the human being to adapt himself to his environment.

For the person and the species love is the form of behavior having the highest survival value.' Ashley Montagu also helped me when he said that when you are having difficulty with a person, 'act as if you love them.' By making that choice---this does not imply a deception, but a choice to love---I have helped myself and my relationships. This is what I try to share with people over and over again---that love heals. It may not cure every problem, but it can heal every life" (pp. 53-4).

"One quality I've noticed that survivors always seem to have is a sense of humor, even in the midst of adversity" (p. 74).

"The purpose of life is to grow in wisdom and to learn to love better" (Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen, NOETIC SCIENCES REVIEW, Autumn 1988) quoted by Siegel on p. 175.

"Life is God's gift to us. What we do with it is our gift to God" (p. 176).

"In 1829, Pope Leo XII declared that whoever allowed himself to be vaccinated ceased to be a child of God, that smallpox was a judgment of God and the vaccination a challenge toward Heaven. Of course no one believes this any longer, but such beliefs can still have a subtle conscious and unconscious effect on people...I believe we should understand that God didn't create the world to make people suffer. But I also believe that God knew we needed the freedom to experience all things in order to make life meaningful. I think the ideal approach to illness lies in the 'Serenity Prayer,' composed by Reinhold Niebuhr: 'God grant me serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference'" (p. 177).