As cartoonist Jules Feiffer puts it: “I grew up to have my father’s looks, my father’s speech patterns, my father’s posture, my father’s walk, my father’s opinions and my mother’s contempt for my father.
The “one I love” was everywhere, including within me.
When we get lost in our stories, we lose touch with our actual experience. Leaning into the future, or rehashing the past, we leave the living experience of the immediate moment. Our trance deepens as we move through the day driven by “I have to do more to be okay” or “I am incomplete; I need more to be happy.” These “mantras” reinforce the trance-belief that our life should be different from what it is.
In the Buddhist tradition, one who has realized the fullness of compassion and lives from compassion is called a bodhisattva.
This means accepting our human existence and all of life as it is. Imperfection is not our personal problem – it is a natural part of existing.
Buddhist mindfulness meditation called vipassana, which means “to see clearly.
When we pause, we don’t know what will happen next. But by disrupting our habitual behaviors, we open to the possibility of new and creative ways of responding to our wants and fears.
Our issues are in our tissues.
The instant we agree to feel fear or vulnerability, greed or agitation, we are holding our life with an unconditionally friendly heart.
When we trust that we are the ocean, we are not afraid of the waves.
I decided that instead of resisting everything, I would agree to everything. I began to greet whatever arose in my awareness with a silently whispered “yes”.
The deepest transformations in our lives come down to something very simple: We learn to respond, not react, to what is going on inside us.
But Radical Acceptance also means not overlooking another important truth: the endless creativity and possibility that exist in living. By accepting the truth of change, accepting that we don’t know how our life will unfold, we open ourselves to hope so that we can move forward with vitality and will.
Taking our hands off the controls and pausing is an opportunity to clearly see the wants and fears that are driving us... Often the moment when we most need to pause is exactly when it feels most intolerable to do so.
Everything within and around us is subject to change; the truth that if we try to hold on to or resist the stream of experience, we deepen the trance of fear.
Through the simple practice of seeing our own goodness, we undo the deeply rooted habits of blame and self-hate that keep us feeling isolated and unworthy.
Whenever we reject a part of our being, we are confirming to ourselves our fundamental unworthiness.
Just as a clear pond reflects the sky, mindfulness allows us to see the truth of our experience.
Is there anything I can do to make myself enlightened? As little as you can do to make the sun rise in the morning. Then of what use are the spiritual exercises you prescribe? To make sure you are not asleep when the sun begins to rise.
The more you Nurture yourself, the more you’ll find you’re living from your future self – the best of who you are.
I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself.