The muscles used to make a smile actually send a biochemical message to our nervous system that it is safe to relax the flight of freeze response.
I decided to write ‘True Refuge’ during a major dive in my own health. Diagnosed with a genetic disease that affected my mobility, I faced tremendous fear and grief about losing the fitness and physical freedom I loved.
There is so much division in this world. So what is really the path of healing? It can begin in this moment, by embracing the life that’s here.
I would say both Western psychology and Eastern paths would recognize that we get caught up in feeling like a separate self and an unworthy self.
If our hearts are ready for anything, we will spontaneously reach out when others are hurting. Living in an ethical way can attune us to the pain and needs of others, but when our hearts are open and awake, we care instinctively.
The trance of unworthiness keeps the sweetness of belonging out of reach. The path to “the sweetness of belonging,” is acceptance – acceptance of ourselves and acceptance of others without judgment.
Even a few moments of offering lovingkindness can reconnect you with the purity of your loving heart.
I think the reason Buddhism and Western psychology are so compatible is that Western psychology helps to identify the stories and the patterns in our personal lives, but what Buddhist awareness training does is it actually allows the person to develop skills to stay in what’s going on.
Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life with the Heart of a Buddha.
Managing life from our mental control towers, we have separated ourselves from our bodies and hearts.
Awakening self-compassion is often the greatest challenge people face on the spiritual path.
It is through realizing loving presence as our very essence, through being that presence, that we discover true freedom.
When we see the secret beauty of anyone, including ourselves, we see past our judgment and fear into the core of who we truly are – not an entrapped self but the radiance of goodness.
As long as we are alive, we feel fear. It is an intrinsic part of our makeup, as natural as a bitter cold winter day or the winds that rip branches off trees. If we resist it or push it aside, we miss a powerful opportunity for awakening.
Through the sacred art of pausing, we develop the capacity to stop hiding, to stop running away from our experience. We begin to trust in our natural intelligence, in our naturally wise heart, in our capacity to open to whatever arises.
What would it be like if I could accept life – accept this moment – exactly as it is?
Buddhist practices offer a way of saying, ‘Hey, come back over here, reconnect.’ The only way that you’ll actually wake up and have some freedom is if you have the capacity and courage to stay with the vulnerability and the discomfort.
But this revolutionary act of treating ourselves tenderly can begin to undo the aversive messages of a lifetime.
By running from what we fear, we feed the inner darkness.
We are waiting for the next moment to contain what this moment does not.
Meditation is evolution’s strategy to bring out our full potential.