Our attitude is frequently one of wanting to get it done, wanting to have it finished in order to be peaceful, to relax, or to enjoy ourselves….
We want to be a feeling.
Rushing along to be something in the next moment,
we fail to open and appreciate this moment
Ajahn Sucitto, Turning the wheel of Truth
photo US fish and wildlife services
We all have well-established habits of thought, emotion, reaction and judgement,
and without the keen awareness of practice, we’re just acting out these patterns.
When they arise, we’re not aware they’ve arisen.
We get lost in them, identify with them, act on them
— so much of our life is just acting out patterns.
Joseph Goldstein
Can you accept the moments of anger and fear as guests,
be willing to receive them with kindness
without feeling obliged to serve them a five-course meal?
Christina Feldman
That sand into which we bury ourselves in order not to see, is formed of words…and it is true that words, their labyrinths, the exhausting immensity of their “possibles”, in short their treachery, have something of quicksand about them
Georges Bataille, French intellectual, 1897 – 1962 L’expérience intérieure (Inner Experience)
With thanks to Laura Rai, dedicated Researcher in the Psychology Department at Maynooth, for sending me this quote
For us to be free, we need to stop believing the thoughts that something is wrong. We need to stop running away from the very vulnerability that needs a profound type of self-compassion. Whatever we cannot embrace with love or with acceptance imprisons us. It keeps us in the trance of a bad self. So the path of emotional healing is really the path of stopping the war, of pausing, of not believing the judgments, of not continuing to punish ourself. Instead of running away and trying to escape the rawness that is here, really meeting it with a deep, deep compassion.
Tara Brach, Meditations for Emotional Healing
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