The paradox of our practice is that the most effective way of transformation is to leave ourselves alone. The more we let everything be just what it is, the more we relax into an open, attentive awareness of one moment after another
Barry Magid, Leave yourself Alone
Autumn means letting go. A good place to start is with self-critical thoughts:
Stop.
Be silent.
When thought has no customers, thought vanishes.
Nisargadatta Maharaj 1897 – 1981
It is good to tune into the energy of each season and live in harmony with it. In autumn we move from the expansive nature of summer to a more internal, introspective focus, setting limits, conserving and harvesting. A good time to let go of the unrealistic demands we place on ourselves.
There is a Japanese saying: The elbow does not bend outward.
It is a smart saying. The freedom of the elbow, the wonderfulness of the elbow, is precisely because of its limitations. This is our awakened attitude. We are free to be completely human. We are not free to be aliens or cartoon creatures.
We are free to be ourselves, with all of our imperfections and bruises.
Jason Shulman, The Instruction Manual for Receiving God
People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own souls.
They will practice yoga and all its exercises, observe a strict regimen of diet, learn theosophy by heart, or mechanically repeat mystic texts from the literature of the whole world – all because they cannot get on with themselves and have not the slightest faith that anything useful could ever come out of their own souls.
Carl Jung
It is not always easy to maintain a tranquil and balanced mind when work pressures mount, or we have a lot of evaluation reports to complete. Resting in awareness by stepping out of the story line is a good thing to do, even for a few moments every hour.
Anyone can restore some degree of balance
between thinking and awareness
right in this present moment,
which is the only moment that any of us ever has anyway.
Jon Kabat Zinn
If we realize that our greatest enemy is fear
and what it does to us, and how much it launches these automatic protective programs,
then we realize that there’s a kind of daily summons to stand up in face of our fears
and risk being who we are and risk potential loss of our comfort zones
and the consensual approval that every child needs,
but which becomes a kind of constrictive burden for the adult
James Hollis
