Found over at Chad’s:
All truly wise thoughts have been thoughts already thousands of times; but to make them truly ours, we must think them over again honestly, till they take root in our personal experience.
–Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Yes, we must think them over again. And over. And over. No, no, I’m not saying one must become obsessive. Moreoever, I’m not a big fan of repeating affirmations. Yet there is power in the experience of repetition and reflection. Once I took a class in speech and diction. I was assigned a Shakesperian monologue to memorize, but the professor wanted me to go farther than that. He wanted me to know the words so well, become so intimate with each syllable, nuance, and concept, that I could utter them as though they originated within me. I was intrigued by the exercise and took on the challenge with all the monologues in that class. It was a transformative experience. When a wise thought becomes integrated into your being, you have had an encounter with truth.
I am currently reading Depth Oriented Brief Therapy by Ecker and Hulley, a therapy couple who are in Oakland, not too far from you. http://www.dobt.com/ They write of a technique where the client is given the “emotional truth” on a low-tech 3×5 card as he/she discovers it to simply read each day as a way of hanging on to it and allowing it to integrate. It has proven to be very helpful for me as I make my own discoveries, to read it over each day and to allow myself the time to steep in it. Transformation happens as the wisdom flavors my knowing.