Fundamentally, the practice of love begins with acceptance – the recognition that wherever we are is the appropriate place to practice, that the present moment is the appropriate time.
But for so many of us, our longing to love and be loved has always been about a time to come, a space in the future when it will just happen, when our hungry hearts will finally be fed, when we will find love.
Bell Hooks, Toward a Revolution of Love
What progress, you ask, have I made?
I have begun to be a friend to myself.
Hecato of Rhodes, c. 100 BC, Stoic philosopher, quoted in Seneca, Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium VI
Sometimes things work out when you do not force them, but rather let your inner wisdom make itself clear through a period of quiet or rest.
If any one cannot grasp this matter,
let them be idle
and the matter will grasp them.
Henry Suso, German Dominican friar, 1295- 1366, The Exemplar
We could say that New Age people in general are addicted to harmony.
The alchemical woodcut says that a child will not become an adult until it breaks the addiction to harmony, chooses the one precious thing, and enters into a joyful participation in the tensions of the world.
Robert Bly, Iron John
Therefore, whatever feeling, past, future or present, internal or external, ….. must be regarded with proper wisdom, in this way:
‘This is not mine, I am not this, this is not my self.’
The Buddha, Anatta-lakkhana Sutta: The Discourse on the Not-self Characteristic
We are encouraged to drop the storyline and simply pause, look out, and breathe. Simply be present for a few seconds, a few minutes, a few hours, a whole lifetime, with our own shifting energies and with the unpredictability of life as it unfolds, wholly partaking in all experiences just exactly as they are. What I’m advocating is that in that precious moment we start to make choices that lead to happiness and freedom rather than choices that lead to unnecessary suffering and the obscuration of our intelligence, our warmth, our capacity to remain open and present with the natural movement of life.
Pema Chodron
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