We Practice To Liberate Ourselves From A

Although It Is Embarrassing And Painful, It Is Very Healing To Stop Hiding From Yourself. It Is Healing To Know All The Ways That You’re Sneaky, All The Ways That You Hide Out, All The Ways That You Shut Down, Deny, Close Off, Criticize People, All Your Weird Little Ways. You Can Know All Of That With Some Sense Of Humor And Kindness. By Knowing Yourself, You’re Coming To Know Humanness Altogether. We Are All Up Against These Things. We Are All In This Together.

Difficult People Are The Greatest Teachers.

When We Practice Generating Compassion, We Can Expect To Experience Our Fear Of Pain. Compassion Practice Is Daring. It Involves Learning To Relax And Allow Ourselves To Move Gently Toward What Scares Us. The Trick To Doing This Is To Stay With Emotional Distress Without Tightening Into Aversion, To Let Fear Soften Us Rather Than Harden Into Resistance.

We Are Not Given Any Promises That, Because Of Our Noble Intentions, Everything Will Be Okay. We Learn That What Truly Heals Is Gratitude And Tenderness. We [need] To Transform Our Minds And Actions For The Sake Of Other People And For The Future Of The World.

No One Ever Tells Us To Stop Running Away From Fear...the Advice We Usually Get Is To Sweeten It Up, Smooth It Over, Take A Pill, Or Distract Ourselves, But By All Means Make It Go Away. (5)