Month: November 2025

The second time I have posted this insight from Ram Dass, but I like to be reminded of it.

When you go out into the woods, and you look at trees, you see all these different trees. And some of them are bent. You sort of understand that it didn’t get enough light, and so it turned that way. And you don’t get all emotional about it.

You just allow it.

The minute you get near humans, you lose all that. And you are constantly saying “You are too this, or I’m too this!” That judgment mind comes in. And so I practice turning people into trees. Which means appreciating them just the way they are.

Ram Dass

One method I learned from my teacher, Diana Winston, is elegantly simple. In your usual meditation, simply add a few words to each time you notice your attention wandering: May I meet this too with kindness.

Whatever comes up, repeat this phrase of loving-kindness toward your thoughts, feelings, or sensations. Do it as many times as you need to, then guide your attention back to the anchor of the breath once again.

And then, as you move through the day, try repeating the same phrase – “may I meet this, too, with kindness” – whenever you notice you are being hard on yourself, judgmental toward yourself, or unkind in any way. Often, learning to meet yourself with kindness can feel like the medicine your heart and inner life yearns for, especially if you’re used to meeting yourself with all kinds of judgment and past conditioning.

Amanda Gilbert, May I Meet This, Too, With Kindness

When you’re worried about something that hasn’t happened yet, notice how your mind projects images of the future. You see the movie of what could go wrong, what you might lose, how it might hurt.

Contemplate the images in your mind.

Is that what really will happen?

Really?

Are you guessing again?

Notice.

Byron Katie, Loving What Is: Four Questions That Can Change Your Life

Easy to understand this teaching these windy days.

When you encounter difficulties, the feelings and stories that arise in reaction are just that, feelings and stories. They are whirlwinds of confusion, based not in what is happening now but in deeply held beliefs about you and your relationship to the world.

Let them swirl – leaves in the wind.

Sometimes you fall back into them and lose touch with the present, but a moment of recognition always comes. Right then, come back to your body, come back to your breath, and rest. The confusion, the stories, and the feelings are still there. They continue to swirl, but you are not lost in them.

Gradually, you come to see that what you took to be “you” is only a pattern, a way of reacting that has repeated itself over and over again. When the pattern no longer controls you, the energy caught up in it is freed, and awareness becomes clear and open.

Ken McLeod, Wake Up to Your Life: Discovering the Buddhist Path of Attention .

Take a shower, wash off the day. Drink a glass of water. Make the room dark. Lie down and close your eyes.

Notice the silence. Notice your heart. Still beating. Still fighting. You made it, after all. You made it, another day. And you can make it one more.

You’re doing just fine.

Charlotte Eriksson, American author