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
Giving up some conditioned behaviour patterns is also good:
You didn’t come onto this earth as a perfectionist or control freak. You weren’t born a person of cringe and contraction. You were born as energy, as life, made of the same stuff as stars, blossoms, breezes. You learned contraction to survive, but that was then. You have paid through the nose — paid but good. It is now your turn to reap.
I never used to take my turn. I always gave my turn away. I helped others have a great turn. I must have had a clipboard by the time I was six, because by then I had a whole caseload of people to keep track of. After they had all gotten a turn, then maybe I could go, if there was time and it didn’t bother anyone.
Now I take my turn, as a radical act.
Anne Lamott, Stitches
Don’t prolong the past,
don’t invite the future,
don’t be deceived by appearances,
just dwell in present awareness.
Patrul Rinpoche
The sense of unworthiness, it seems, comes out of our being talked out of, trained out of, conditioned out of trusting our natural being. It is the result of being turned away from ourselves, taught to distrust ourselves. We are worthy of letting go of our unworthiness. If we did nothing but practice letting go of unworthiness, much of the stuff we’re working so hard to clear away would have no support system. We would have more room to grow. Consciously we surrender unworthiness as it arises, not entertaining it with the ego’s list of credits. the work which will awaken us is that of becoming keenly aware of unworthiness without judging it.
Stephen Levine, A Gradual Awakening
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
Very foggy here in Ireland this morning. Autumn starts early – a “season of mists and mellow fruitfulness“
It is more about seeing the moments of joy that are already there rather than having to work hard at creating them.
We are put on earth a little space,
That we may learn to bear the beams of love.
William Blake
