20 September 2010

Pema Chodron says

The way to work with fear, to know our fear so that it can lead to fearlessness - one of the best tools for that is gentleness.


How to taste the quality of the moment [...] without the labels of good and bad, or succeeding and failing. But really just get used to tasting or knowing or experiencing the quality of what you are going through, not as some final thing. [...] No feeling is final, but somehow in the moment, we often feel, a sort of - this is how it is - in such a heavy way. And then so much story line goes with that that it drags us down.

So sometimes we like what we are feeling and then we don't like what we're feeling. And then we like it again, and then we don't like it again. And then it just sort of goes like that - it's actually fine for it to be like that. 

The trouble is, we all take everything so personally.
Taking it personally means investing so much energy and time as if you are like this, and the situation is like this, and its fixed, instead of realizing that its always shifting and changing.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Even lies between partners?

My Zen teachings tell me not to be judgmental. But it is hard not to be. To not take it personally, it is hard too.

That's how I am trying handle it now, with an open mind, not to take it personally, but there are certain early mornings when I can feel the lie and the mistrust engendered corroding me inside.

It's the corrosion, the rancor inside that is keeping me awake at times.

Sabine said...

No idea, really. I take everthing so fucking personally - to the point that I could curse fate nonstop for loading me - ME, wonderful, precious ME - with this illness. Meanwhile, I am wasting my time with anger and fear and being mad... fully aware of how useless this bevaviour is. So: one step at a time or in the immortal words of Jimminy Cricket (I am quoting from memory) "If at first you don't succeed, try and try again."