Sharon Salzberg

Real Love for ourselves by definition includes every aspect of our lives__he good, the bad, the difficult, the challenging past, the uncertain future, as well as all the shameful, upsetting experiences and encounters we__ just as soon forget.

In those moments when we realize how much we cannot control, we can learn to let go.

Fearful of wasting a second, we hoard time as if it were money.

As a friend of mine told me about Real Happiness: you wrote this one in American.

In Buddhism there is one word for mind & heart: chitta. Chitta refers not just to thoughts and emotions in the narrow sense of arising from the brain, but also to the whole range of consciousness, vast & unimpeded.

Rather than trying to control what can never be controlled, we can find a sense of security in being able to meet what is actually happening. This is allowing for the mystery of things: not judging but rather cultivating a balance of mind that can receive what is happening, whatever it is. This acceptance is the source of our safety and confidence.When we feel unhappiness or pain, it is not a sign that things have gone terribly wrong or that we have done something wrong by not being able to control the circumstances. Pain and pleasure are constantly coming and going, and yet we can be happy. When we allow for the mystery , sometimes we can discover that right in the heart of a very difficult time, right in the midst of a painful situation, there is freedom. In those moments when we realize how much we cannot control, we can learn to let go. As we begin to understand this, we move from a mode of struggling to control what comes into our lives into a mode of simply wishing to truly connect with what is. This is a radical shift in worldview.

Our vision becomes very narrow when we need things to be a certain way and cannot accept things the way they actually are.

Mindfulness helps us see the addictive aspect of self-criticism_ a repetitive cycle of flaying ourselves again and again, feeling the pain anew.

If we turn away from our own pain, we may find ourselves projecting this aversion onto others, seeing them as somehow inadequate for being in a troubled situation.

The overarching practice of letting go is also one of gaining resilience and insight.

To reteach a thing its loveliness is the nature of metta. Through lovingkindness, everyone & everything can flower again from within.

Our ability to connect with others is innate, wired into our nervous systems, and we need connection as much as we need physical nourishment.

Respecting differences while gaining insight into our essential connected-ness, we can free ourselves from the impulse to rigidly categorize the world in terms of narrow boundaries and labels.

The combination of realizing our distinctiveness along with our unity is seeing interdependence.

In one of the verses of Lal Ded, or Lalla, a fourteenth-century mystic from Kashmir, Lalla says: __t the end of a crazy-moon night the love of God rose. I said __t__ me, Lalla.___t__ me, Lalla,_ becomes __t__ me_whoever you are,_ proclaiming that we no longer stand on the sidelines but are leaping directly into the center of our lives, our truth, our full potential. No one can take that leap for us; and no one has to. This is our journey of faith.

Concepts such as loving kindness should never be used as weapons against our real feelings.

Instead of catching ourselves after we first felt angry, we develop a visceral sensitivity to what's happening within us in the moment & through mindfulness, we can shape our reaction right away.

Hatred does not help us alleviate our pain even in the slightest.