Patterns

"We need to examine the nature of patterns and how healthy ones (meaningful practices) can calcify into unhealthy ones (habitual routines).   We need to consider the art of softening habitual routines back into meaningful practices.  We need to discern when the rigid ones just need to be broken so our hearts can once again breathe."

Family

"Sometimes when i think of my parents, who have hurt me, I am lulled by a wintering sky to feel for them, to try on their view, but in my empathy an old pattern kicks in and I start to lose the truth of my hurt, as if there is only room for one set of feelings -theirs.

The struggle is a common one.  So often we feel for others and lose ourselves, or cut others off to preserve ourselves.  Like a radio that can only tune to one station at a time, it seems like only one side of things can be received, though all sides are broadcast.

But compassion is a deeper thing that waits beyond the tension of choosing sides.  Compassion, in practice, does not require us to give up the truth of what we feel or the truth of our reality.  Nor does it allow us to minimize the humanity of those who hurt us.  Rather, we are asked to know ourselves enough that we can stay open to the truth of others, even when their truth or their inablility to live up to their truth has hurt us.

This does not remove the emotional facts of our lives, nor does it ask us to remain in a hurtful situation.  Rather compassion asks that we open like mountains to the sky, like mountains that can withstand every kind of weather."  Mark Nepo

Learning

"Any profound learning requires long stretches of dedicated practice with no seeming progress."  George Leonard and Michael Murphy