The biggest risk is to trust
that these conditions
are all that we need
to be ourselves
Han Hung
Are we the sum of our thoughts?
We usually take ourselves to be the sum of these thoughts, ideas, emotions and body sensations, but there is nothing solid to them. How can we claim to be our thoughts or opinions or emotions or body when they never stay the same?
Jack Kornfield
Teachers often suggest considering your thoughts to be like clouds in the sky. Some are dark and stormy, some are beautiful and fat, while others are wispy and ethereal. Sometimes there are no clouds at all. No matter. Just like clouds in the sky, thoughts pass through your mind. And just like the sky, your mind can contain it all.
Susan Piver
Why do we let things get so complicated?
I was looking at some old family photographs last week. These black-and-white images from when I was a child on holidays capture little moments, frozen for all time. In them I can see myself when I was young and carefree, smiling easily, not observing myself, not wondering how I am doing. Looking at them I easily get back in touch with a time when love was given without complications, a love that was genuine and asked for little in return. Times were simple, and we were simple too. We embraced life – and each other – freely.
Life has changed everyone in this photograph, as it does all people. The naturalness of childhood, with its trust and more open spirit, makes way for the passing of time, for older, supposedly wiser years, for the onset of worries, and for a focus on ourselves and doubts about what once seemed so sure. We grow up, and as we do we become less open, more complicated. We begin to guard and armour the heart, hardening in our attitude towards others and toward life. The sad thing is, we convince ourselves that this is right.
I am sure that everyone reading this has memories like the ones I have when I look at a picture such as this. We all wonder where did all that optimism and openness go? What happened to the love that we gave to others over the years, that we invested with the best of our intentions? All those dreams, that looking forward to something good, to something that would endure for ever, and would be there in good times and bad?
It seems to me that all of us are doing our best in a life story where we are never really sure of the conclusion. A story where we try to live good lives, and be fair to others, and yet still learn that there is a lot of things that are outside our control and where we have to learn through pain and sorrow. And in some cases, the simple openness does not work; we realize that we have to let go and trust in a process that we cannot understand. Why do some things not work out, some good people get ill and die, friends move away and no longer stay in touch? And yet, even if we have been visited by sadness or have been hurt, we keep touching back into that young heart, which believes in the goodness of life and in the power of love and of friendship. We have to move on, holding on to our hopes despite the unresolved aspects of our life and our story. We are asked just to try, and try again, and then again some more. The greatest tragedy would be to let the experiences of life convince us that the optimism and smiles we had as children were completely misplaced.
The way modern stress affects us
A short presentation by the always entertaining Robert Sapolsky, showing how prolonged exposure to the stress response causes more problems than stress itself:
Our sense of self and our early experiences
Our early ex
periences strongly shape our sense of self. They become hard-wired into our unconscious system and then are triggered easily at important moments in adulthood. Because they are so deeply ingrained in our cells they can influence us when we are drawing conclusions about the kind of person we are. Frequently they are concerned with laying down a blueprint as to how reliable or safe the world is, and to what extent others can be trusted. This influences the broad autobiographical narrative which tends to be established by our late teens, colouring our expectations about life and about people. We are balancing our experiences of attachment or closeness with our experiences of unreliability and disappointment. Early disappointment affects our ability to trust or feel safe, or to fully give ourselves in adult relationships. Consequently we often approach a relationship in the hope that it will be the one which will finally heal these early disappointments – hoping to rewrite the relational blueprint which caused us problems as a child – or behave in a way that our negative expectations will be confirmed. Sometimes the repair happens, but often we are looking outside for something which needs inner work to be fully achieved.
We are wired for attachment
in a world of impermanence.
How we negotiate that tension
shapes who we become.
Robert Neimeyer, Ph.D.
A mistaken view of happiness
Genuine happiness does not come from accumulating pleasant feelings.
Joseph Goldstein
