Freedom from mental
suffering is not a mystery, but a willingness to examine what keeps us from
directly experiencing the deep-blue peace and quiet joy that are always
accessible and forever unaffected by the passing show.
Attention is
everything. Without it, all else is a
temporary fix and no long-lasting change is possible.
We live in a culture
that worships more. We are so brain
washed into believing that more is better that we no longer question what it
costs or whether it adds anything to our lives.
Instead of avoiding
fear we can do what is counterintuitive: welcome it and notice that the part
that allows the fear is much bigger than the fear itself.
The heart of any
addiction -- drugs, alcohol, sex, money, food -- is the avoidance of pain
coupled with the unwillingness to acknowledge that both the behavior and its
consequences serve us even as they destroy our lives.
Because the body's
sensations are immediate, noticing them cuts through the babble of the mind
that is always lurching from the past to the future.
Our power is not in
blaming or shaming, but in waking up from the collective trance in which we've
been living.
During the November
2016 election, Kelly Oxford requested that women use Twitter to tell stories of
their first sexual assaults.
Twenty-seven million women responded within twenty-four hours.
For power to be
authentic, the obstacles to it must be named.
Being free takes
first realizing we're in prison, and then questioning what imprisons us.
At some point (it
looks like this is it), therapy meets spirituality and fixing ourselves meets
the realization that there is nothing more to fix.
Whether we are
sailing into the New Age or heading toward Armageddon, our work is exactly the
same: to quiet the drums of fear, speak from a soft heart, and act from our
shared humanity.
Climb out of your
mind and back into your body, even if it feels uncomfortable.