The Spiritual Path Is Not A Solo

Learning To Pause Is The First Step In The Practice Of Radical Acceptance. A Pause Is A Suspension Of Activity, A Time Of Temporary Disengagement When We Are No Longer Moving Toward Any Goal ... The Pause Can Occur In The Midst Of Almost Any Activity And Can Last For An Instant, For Hours Or For Seasons Of Our Life ... You Might Try It Now: Stop Reading And Sit There, Doing 'no Thing,' And Simply Notice What You Are Experiencing.

By Regarding Ourselves With Kindness, We Begin To Dissolve The Identity Of An Isolated, Deficient Self. This Creates The Grounds For Including Others In An Unconditionally Loving Heart.

We're So Used To Presenting Ourselves And Getting Approval According To Our Achievements That It's Difficult To Be Authentic And Trust That We'll Be Accepted Just As We Are.

We Are Uncomfortable Because Everything In Our Life Keeps Changing -- Our Inner Moods, Our Bodies, Our Work, The People We Love, The World We Live In. We Can't Hold On To Anything -- A Beautiful Sunset, A Sweet Taste, An Intimate Moment With A Lover, Our Very Existence As The Body/mind We Call Self -- Because All Things Come And Go. Lacking Any Permanent Satisfaction, We Continuously Need Another Injection Of Fuel, Stimulation, Reassurance From Loved Ones, Medicine, Exercise, And Meditation. We Are Continually Driven To Become Something More, To Experience Something Else.

I Think Of Depression As The Mechanism That Pushes Down The Pain Of That Loss. It Tries To Distance Us From The Loss But It Lowers Our Whole Energy Level. I Think That's A Pervasive Way We End Up Responding To Loss Or The Anticipation Of Loss. Natural But Not Necessary.