Let go of the idea that the path will lead you to your goal.
The truth is that with each step we take, we arrive. Repeat that to yourself every morning: ‘I’ve arrived.’ That way you’ll find it much easier to stay in touch with each second of your day.
Paulo Coelho
Meditation is about letting the mind be as it is and knowing something about how it is in this moment.
It’s not about getting somewhere else, but about allowing yourself to be where you already are.
Jon Kabat Zinn, Wherever you go, there you are
Seeing beginnings and endings is a vital step in developing the understanding that nothing exists apart from interdependent, cause-and-effect relationships. To see the beginnings and endings is also, in my experience, a great support in difficult times. Early on, as I began to trust in the fiber of my being that nothing lasts, I became less afraid of pain. The fact that everything has an end comforted me. “One way or another,” I would say to myself, “this too will pass.” I was glad I saw that…the end of the day is the beginning of the night, and that the dead rose becomes compost for new growth.
Sad and wistful and lonesome are what human beings feel when they are parted from what they love. They are difficult emotions, but they aren’t problems. They become suffering when we resent them, or resist them, or pretend that they aren’t there. I know that when I struggle with the pain of any loss, the struggle preoccupies my mind and leaves no room for hope. When I recognize the pain I feel as the legitimate result of loss, I am respectful of its presence and kind to myself. My mind always relaxes when it is kind, and around the edges of the truth of whatever has ended, I see displays of what might be beginning.
Sylvia Boorstein
Imagine how it might feel to suspend all your judging and instead to let each moment be just as it is, without attempting to evaluate it as “good” or “bad.” This would be a true stillness, a true liberation.
Meditation means cultivating a non-judging attitude toward what comes up in the mind, come what may.
Jon Kabat Zinn
I think Carl Rogers said it best. He said the great paradox was that it was not until I accepted myself just as I was that I was free to change. In other words – acceptance, pausing and being with our life just as it is, is the the precondition to all transformation. 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
All we need to do is awaken to the here-and-now
– to stop jabbering to ourselves –
and be present in this moment.
Steve Hagen
