check out the second paragraph. we can ask ourselves: how does this view relate to our religious practice? to our way of loving?
~j ⭕️♥️🙏🏻
#love #path #practice
Posted @withregram • @sharonsalzberg
In certain philosophical systems in India during the Buddha’s time, it was believed that if the body was tortured enough, abused enough, the spirit would soar free and be liberated. Nowadays most of us are not inclined to torture our bodies to free our spirits. However, we do seem to have our own variation of that theme by believing that if we abuse our minds enough with self-hatred and self-condemnation, somehow that abuse will be a path that liberates us.
For a true spiritual transformation to flourish, we must see beyond this tendency to mental self-flagellation. Spirituality based on self-hatred can never sustain itself. Generosity coming from self- hatred becomes martyrdom. Morality born of self- hatred becomes rigid repression. Love for others without the foundation of love for ourselves becomes a loss of boundaries, codependency, and a painful and fruitless search for intimacy. But when we contact, through meditation, our true nature, we can allow others to also find theirs.
[Image Description: Blue painting with white lines and overlaid text reading, “Spirituality base of self-hatred can never sustain itself. – Sharon Sal
coming and going, arising and falling, appearing and disappearing. let go and allow the flow. no need to grasp, no need to push. we can be aware and allow for spaciousness, for all that arises within this impermanence. what a relief!and when we get caught up and we feel the tightening of our grip, we can remember to breathe, we can return to our breath and the freedom of the moment.we can practice this, one moment to the next. ~j
it’s easy to forget, especially when we are fearful, wounded, or angry, that there are no exceptions.
we see what happens all the time, when people’s unfaced fear, unhealed pain, and untransformed anger manifests into exclusion and demonization of others. harm and destruction is the result, and the cycle of harming continues…
healing comes through breaking the cycle. breaking the cycle allows for something better, more beneficial to arise. this can be our hope and this hope begins with each of us.
i really value this insightful *quote, from spiritual friend and teacher, Susan Piver. i think it contains some really needed wisdom.
so often, we meet our feelings and emotional states with judgement and criticism. we feel that somehow we aren’t living up to the saintly standards we’ve set for ourselves, but we aren’t saints. we are human beings – messy and beautiful, experiencing this mystery, learning and growing.
instead of greeting our emotions with harshness, we can meet our emotions with gentleness, with love, with an open heart. we can make friends with them. when we meet what we feel with gentleness, with love, with an open heart, we allow for spaciousness to arise. in that spaciousness, we have the opportunity to see clearly, to learn, to grow, to care, to be compassionate to ourselves, and then to others as well.
when we begin by judging ourselves, by criticizing ourselves, we narrow, we close up, and we can get stuck. when we are closed, we are not able to see in a wider view or with clarity. we are likely unable to fully learn or grow. how is this beneficial?
meeting our emotions as friends, with an open heart and love, can be a path and practice we choose from moment to moment. the path and practice of an open heart.
The Metta Garden 