First, come into the present. Flash on what’s happening with you right now. Be fully aware of your body, its energetic quality. Be aware of your thoughts and emotions.
Next, feel your heart, literally placing your hand on your chest if you find that helpful. This is a way of accepting yourself just as you are in this moment, a way of saying “This is my experience right now, and it’s ok”
Then go into the next moment without any agenda.
Pema Chodron, Living Beautifully
photo elvert barnes
One of the most toxic new-age ideas is that we should “keep a positive attitude.” What a crazy, crazy idea that is. It is much healthier, much more healing, to allow yourself to feel whatever is coming up in you, and allow yourself to work with that anxiety, depression, grief. Because, underneath that, if you allow those feelings to come up and express themselves, then you can find the truly positive way of living in relationship to those feelings. That’s such an important thing…..It’s not about some “spiritual experience” of being high all the time. Not at all. It is about living with the ongoing stresses and strains and difficulties – and joys – of life, but doing so in a way that we feel whole. Living in relationship with the struggles of life is what makes us human.
Michael Lerner, The Difference between Healing and Curing
photo andrea westmorland
Today is the Christian feast of Candlemas, which traditionally involved the blessing of candles for use in the home. It was a reminder that light will return, sustaining people around this midway point of winter, giving encouragement when the cold and darkness seemed to be never-ending. It helped people to realise that darkness and not-knowing are natural parts of the cycle of life and death, just as are periods of cold and lack of growth. Stepping into unknown territory is necessary from time to time.
Life is a good teacher and a good friend. Things are always in transition if we could only realize it. Nothing ever sums itself up in the way that we would like to dream about. The spiritual journey involves going beyond hope and fear, stepping into unknown territory, continually moving forward. The most important aspect of being on the spiritual path may be to just keep moving. Usually, when we reach our limit, we freeze in terror. Our bodies freeze and so do our minds. Rather than indulge or reject our experience, we can somehow let the energy of the emotion, the quality of what we’re feeling pierce us to the heart. This is a noble way to live. It’s the path of compassion – the path of cultivating human bravery and kindheartedness.
Pema Chodron.
The moment that Teijitsu, 18th century abbess of Hakujuan, near Eiheiji, Japan, learned to let go.
She saw that all phenomena arose, abided, and fell away. She saw that even knowing this arose, abided, and fell away. Then she knew there was nothing more than this, no ground, nothing to lean on, stronger than the cane she held. Nothing to lean upon at all, and no one leaning… And she opened the clenched fist in her mind and let go, and fell, into the midst of everything.
Sallie Tisdale, The Women of the Way: Discovering 2,500 years of Buddhist Wisdom
This is what the things can teach us:
to fall patiently, to trust our heaviness
Even a bird has to do that before he can fly.
Rilke, Book of Hours, II, 16
The understanding of welcome, outlined in this post, applies not just to other people but also to the emotions and thoughts provoked by everything that happens today:
Each day we can encounter setbacks or difficulties, or simply things may happen which we did not expect. And sometimes they can reveal a lot, if they stir up our own mixture of unresolved issues linked to our past. Rather than regarding them as diversions or obstacles on the path, we are encouraged to see them as where we are called to go. The “bad” situation becomes something to be skillfully worked with:
A person who falls to the ground gets back up by using that ground.
To try to get up without relying on that ground would be impossible.
Chinul, 1158–1210,
Zen Master considered to be the most significant influence on the formation of Korean Zen
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