Rumi: Be Kind

Be kind to yourself, dear - to our innocent follies. 

Forget any sounds or touch you knew that did not help you dance. 

You will come to see that all evolves us.

 

- Rumi

 

Christopher Germer: From Acceptance to Self-Compassion

The mental health field is discovering the importance of accepting emotional pain. Ordinarily, when a person come to therapy saying "I'm stressed out," the therapist tries to help him or her reduce the stress, perhaps by teaching relaxation skills. Therapists are very obliging that way. Sometimes they try to change the distorted thinking that seems to make a person depressed (for example, "I'm stupid," or "I'll always be abandoned in the end.") These strategies fit into the category of "Tell me the problem and we'll fix it." In essence, therapists and clients unwittingly join forces, trying to uproot negative experience.

These approaches have met with reasonable success. Recent research indicates, however, that the healing mechanisms behind successful therapy are not what we thought they were: It's the process of establishing a new relationship with our thoughts and feelings, rather than directly challenging them, that makes the difference. This new relationship is less avoidant, less entangled, more accepting, more compassionate, and more aware. Leaning into our problems with open eyes and an open heart - with awareness and compassion - is the process by which we get emotional relief.

- Christopher K. Germer, Ph.D., The Mindful Path to Self-Compassion:

Freeing Yourself from Destructive Thoughts and Emotions

Chögyam Trungpa: The Awakened Heart

When you awaken your heart ... you find, to your surprise, that your heart is empty. You find that you are looking into outer space. What are you, who are you, where is your heart? If you really look, you won't find anything tangible and solid. Of course, you might find something very solid if you have a grudge against someone or you have fallen possessively in love. But that is not awakened heart. If you search for awakened heart, if you put your hand through your rib cage and feel for it, there is nothing there except tenderness. You feel sore and soft, and if you open your eyes to the rest of the world, you feel tremendous sadness. This kind of sadness doesn't come from being mistreated. You don't feel sad because someone has insulted you or because you feel impoverished. Rather, this experience of sadness is unconditional. It occurs because your heart is completely exposed. There is no skin or tissue covering it; it is pure raw meat. Even if a tiny mosquito lands on it, you feel so touched. Your experience is raw and tender and so personal. It is this tender heart of a warrior that has the power to heal the world.

- Chögyam Trungpa, Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior

Also excerpted from The Buddha Is Still Teaching

Stephen Levine: Such Relief

Such Relief

Pain becomes suffering as we harden to it. Softening is such a relief, such grace to just sit lovingly with a modicum of discomfort, remembering all those others at this moment with this same pain in this same body of pain and compassion.

Some, such as one old monk who thought that people, like a dying horse, should suffer to the end, think suffering is somehow noble, that pain is holy. I have seen all too many Judgment Day-fearing people dying in great pain because of this hopeful, tortured self-negation.

This is nothing holy about pain. We need to stop deifying our suffering.

Pain, though, does have its benefits. As the Dalai Lama has pointed out, if it were not for pain, there would be no compassion. Pain draws compassion like its opposite, stillness, draws wisdom.

- Stephen Levine, Turning Toward the Mystery: A Seeker's Journey

Also excerpted from The Buddha Is Still Teaching

Jean Shinoda Bolen: Caring For Your Soul

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

Jean Shinoda Bolen: Only When Women and Children Are Safe

Palestinians look at the damage after an Israeli strike hit a tent area in the courtyard of Al Aqsa Martyrs hospital in Deir al Balah, Gaza Strip, Monday, Oct. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)

Only when women and children are safe

from violence, deprivation, and abuse

will the cycle of violence begetting violence

— which underlies terrorism and war —

end.

— Jean Shinoda Bolen, M.D., 

From Urgent Message From Mother

Around 70% of deaths in Gaza are

women and children, says UN:

https://abc7.com/post/around-70-deaths-gaza-are-women-children-says/15537402/

Shelter Through the Storms

May we be tender and brave and remember 

to love and shelter one another 

through life's storms. 

 

 ~ Molly

 

Clarissa Pinkola Estés: The Doors to the World of the Wild Self

The doors to the world of the wild Self are few but precious. 

If you have a deep scar, that is a door, 

if you have an old, old story, that is a door. 

If you love the sky and the water so much you 

almost cannot bear it, that is a door. 

If you yearn for a deeper life, a full life, a sane life, 

that is a door.

― Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype

 

John O'Donohue: To Come Home To Yourself

To Come Home To Yourself

May all that is unforgiven in you

Be released.

May your fears yield

Their deepest tranquillities.

May all that is unlived in you

Blossom into a future

Graced with love.

- John O'Donohue, To Bless the Space Between Us

Jack Kornfield: When We Let Go of Our Battles and Open Our Hearts

Photo by Molly

We must look at ourselves over and over again in order to learn to love, to discover what has kept our hearts closed, and what it means to allow our hearts to open...

When we let go of our battles and open our heart to things as they are, then we come to rest in the present moment. This is the beginning and the end of spiritual practice. Only in this moment can we discover that which is timeless. Only here can we find the love that we seek. Love in the past is simply memory, and love in the future is fantasy. Only in the reality of the present can we love, can we awaken, can we find peace and understanding and connection with ourselves and the world.

― Jack Kornfield, A Path with Heart: A Guide Through the Perils and Promises of Spiritual Life