Revealed on Retreat

     I just got back from a week-long retreat.  Life wasted no opportunity to remind me of my self-delusion, and my expectations of people and the world around me.  Within the first few days it hit me:  I was not just retreating from the world, I had been retreating from the changes happening in me and my life. 

     Retreats provide dedicated time and space to intensively explore our inner world and our attitude to the outside world. In this case, the day began at 4:30 AM with the first sitting meditation at 5:00 AM.  Interspersed throughout the day were one hour sitting and walking meditations broken up by breakfast and lunch (eaten in meditative silence).  According to monastic tradition, after 12PM eating isn’t allowed. The day ended at 10PM.  Even though other people were around, the practice is usually to observe noble silence except for functional speech.  The grueling schedule is offset by moments of tender kindness and delight in a peaceful setting.  Throughout the time, you have access to support staff and monks or teachers who can guide you through the experiences you are encountering on your inner journey. 

     From the get go, I ran headlong into my expectations.  At the first meditation session I heard a woman burping loudly.  It was clear she did so with an open mouth and wasn’t trying to quieten it.  A lightning bolt of disgust and irritation flashed through me. Several years ago on a 10 day retreat I had succeeded in not getting annoyed at a man who had burped through every sitting session.  My pique this time was surprising to me.  The heat of anger built up in me as she continued her staccato little burps.

     The struggle to keep my mind on the meditation object was as strong as the urge to stomp – mindfully, mind you – over to her and tell her to just stop it.  Then my body began shaking with suppressed laughter at the absurdity of the situation because I knew full well that my disgust resulted from my own reactivity, and had nothing to do with her.

     At breakfast, I looked up to find the same woman sitting a mere foot across the table from me.  Life, the cosmic jokester, evidently thought I needed more exposure to this charming woman who burped through the meal, chewed with an open mouth, spat chewed food onto her plate, and slurped her soup (served at every meal).  Whenever my idea of good manners, decorum, civility, and consideration were challenged, I’d remind myself, with eyes averted, that the burping and slurping were merely sound waves hitting my eardrums.  Everything else was my interpretation of an essentially neutral occurrence. Adopting such a view restored calm. When we see or hear something, we can’t halt the mental processes that cause us to label it ‘good’ or ‘bad’.  The only choice point is whether we will act on our inclination or not.

     As with most things, awareness is the first step to prioritizing where to place our attention, which eventually leads to change.

     A discovery that broadsided me was that I am not as strong, disciplined, or resilient as I used to be or think I am.  Seven hours of sitting meditation a day takes a toll on the human body, and as much as my mind protested being tamed, my body shrieked its disapproval at being kept in one position for so many hours.  I had to consciously work on discerning and then accepting when I needed to give my body a rest, and when to remain seated until the aches and restlessness had played themselves out.  This physical strain was a huge lesson for me. 

     In the past, I would have been able to sit through the discomfort and hunger but this time I really struggled.  Spending hours on end observing one’s own mind brings up emotions and reveals one’s obsessive thoughts.  My thoughts lingered in the past, and on my ability to meditate for long hours and to be without food.  I was yearning for that younger resilient body and resisting who I now was.  This resistance and rigidity was exacerbating my physical and mental distress.  When I began to soften, my situation eased.

       I undertook the retreat to develop my spiritual practice.  Intellectually I knew, of course, that spiritual growth happens in tandem with emotional and physical releases, and mental shifts of consciousness, but this time I was so much more mindful of all the levels of my being that were transforming throughout this retreat. I returned home exhausted, but tranquil and deeply present to the changes unfolding within me and outside of me.  Retreats are not spa holidays.  In spite of the grueling schedule and temporary discomfort, retreats reveal the layers of ourselves usually buried beneath our busyness and distractedness, they help us encounter ourselves, and to develop spiritually.     May you find time to be with yourself in silence.

Mindfully Managing Desire

     Valentine’s Day is typically a celebration of love, romance, and the satiation of sensual pleasures and desires.

     At the start of February, I began a month-long detox requiring I eliminate many foods from my diet.  Even though I don’t often indulge in chocolate and cookies, my craving for them during this month became so pronounced that I had to sit up and take notice. 

     Apparently desire, of all the emotions we experience, is the one that’s most easily masked from our own perception i.e. we neither notice its influence on us nor do we see clearly while under its influence.  In contrast emotions like anger, fear, or sadness usually appear without too much camouflage.  With desire, this is not the case. 

     Of course, there are good desires like wanting to be of service in the world or to be kinder and more loving.   Needing to eat when hungry and rest when tired are neutral desires that don't have any harmful impact either.
     However, harmful craving or desire impairs our ability to see reality.  The mindset we approach life situations with when under the influence of this emotion is mainly to validate our opinions, reinforce preconceived notions, and/or to get what we want.  Such longing or yearning is the interloper between what we are experiencing and what is actually happening.  Consequently we rarely directly perceive life.
      We may well recognize when we are craving something, but its inherent seductive poison is not apparent to us.  This is because with desire there is always an attendant justification. 

     An example:  The other day I’d weeded the garden, did laundry, cooked, completed some business matters, and by the afternoon I was ready to relax.  My idea of relaxation is watching a movie.  By the way, a few years ago I’d given up cable service because I’d spent an unhealthy amount of time in front of the television.  Knowing my craving for wanting to lose myself in some show or movie, I try to be mindfully aware when I indulge this habit.  So on the day when I’d been especially industrious, I felt entitled to sit and watch one or two full length movies as a reward to myself.

     The problem here is -- desire is the thing that’s driving my actions.  The reason or justification is secondary.  If we don’t see the desire for what it is:  to blank out, distract ourselves, escape some problem, or perhaps to chase pleasure, we unwittingly perpetuate an unhelpful habit.  What we tend to only see is the justification, which is validating the unconscious urge we are experiencing.

     To be clear, pleasure is a necessary part of life.  A life devoid of sensual pleasure will surely be dreary and depressing.  Pleasure only becomes an issue when we can no longer control our yearning for it,  when we seek it constantly, and want it to be our only life experience.  At this stage, desire or pleasure seeking becomes attachment, obsession and clinging. 

     The way to bring the unconsciousness of desire to the surface is to pay attention.  Notice when you are yearning or longing for something and ask yourself what’s behind that feeling.  Don’t be surprised by all the reasons that arise.  Instead look beyond the reason to the basic urge that is motivating the action. 

     If your ‘escape”  is watching television or perhaps drinking, overeating, gambling, or playing video games you can train yourself to do those things mindfully.  For e.g. Sit in front of the television, (with it turned off, of course) close your eyes and check in with yourself.  You could ask questions like: “what am I feeling right now?”;  “what thoughts are plaguing me?”;  “what don’t I want to face right now?”  Once you have your answer, or when you are ready, turn on the television and enjoy your movie.  

     This way, you may still be indulging your desire, but it is no longer unconscious.  You are seeing it for what it is.  It has become a mindful action. 

    May you mindfully manage your desires. 

Breaking Unhelpful Habits

      It’s a new year.  In January, many of us usually resolve to rid ourselves of some unhelpful habit.  What are habits?  We know they are easy to develop (sometimes they seem to miraculously appear), and are notoriously hard to get rid off.
     Habits are formed simply by repeating some behavior, reaction, or answer.  There’s differing opinions on how long they take to manifest.   The physiological explanation for the formation of habits is that a neural pathway is created in the brain whenever an action, thought, or behavior is replayed.  Each repetition deepens and strengthens that neural pathway.  For example: say we are feeling bad about ourselves.  To deny or block the sensations of pain or sadness we feel, we’ll eat a slab of chocolate, drink a bottle of wine, or watch television for hours.  Every time we do this pattern, the habit is entrenched.
     Before long, the time between the trigger (unworthy feelings) and the reaction (eating) becomes almost instantaneous and unconscious.  Habits are learned behaviours.  We have the option to respond differently.
     The best method for breaking habits is to notice what immediately precedes the action, thought, feeling, or reaction.  Disrupting unconscious tendencies requires we notice what’s happening in our mind and body, as they are constantly revealing our experience to external or internal situations. The idea being that if you can see what causes you to act in a particular way and its effects, you can consciously choose a different way of dealing with it. Thus lessening yours and others pain.
     This is the guiding principle behind mindfulness practices:  to disrupt the chain reaction or sequence of occurrences to prevent the formation of habitual patterns.  Mindfulness – paying attention to what’s happening in our thoughts, body, and around us with the idea of learning from them – not only blocks the entrenching of a negative or unhelpful habit, it also provides the opportunity for creating healthy positive ones.
     Our thoughts can make us happy or unhappy.  To cultivate the habit of happiness, we have to tend the seeds of being grateful, kind, and friendly to self and others, and neglect the seeds of judging, anger, and fearing.   
     The way to stop the creation of a habit is to breathe.  Awareness of the breath is absolutely vital.  It creates a space or gap between the trigger event and the reaction. That small gap will eventually grow, and allow you the time in which to wisely choose your words, actions, thoughts and feelings.  Thus increasing yours and others happiness. In the beginning, remembering to breathe when upset may be difficult but persevering in the habit of noticing (this is a good habit) will yield results.
          May you breathe, notice, choose; this is the mindful path to cultivating beneficial habits.

Season's Greetings

May you and yours...

      have a wonderful holiday season 

and 

all the very best for the New Year.  

Thank you for your support this year. 

This Precious Time...

     I can’t believe this year is almost over.

     For some reason, probably age related, this year I’ve been very conscious of how quickly Fridays seem to be coming round.

     The word that keeps coming to mind is “Precious”.

     Realizing that time is moving on and there won't be an infinite number of tomorrows has really driven home the preciousness of the time we have with each other right now.   So why not celebrate in a most heartfelt way?

     During this year’s festivities, we can make the people in our lives feel how special they are to us.  Life is fleeting; life is precious. 
     Time spent together, in spite of moments of irritation and hurt is indeed valuable. Our life paths intersect for a limited period in a lifetime.  For some relationships it may feel interminable, but in reality it is brief.

     This holiday season we can do more than just share our home, food, and presents with each other; we can share our presence.  We can take the time to connect in a meaningful way with the person who’s flown across country, or just driven across town be with us.  

     If sharing deep feelings is uncomfortable, then simply expressing gratitude and appreciation through gestures, expressions, touch, and when you feel strong enough through words is the most treasured gift we can give each other.

     May you seize this holiday season to truly enjoy the people in your life. 

Relating to Relatives

     Thanksgiving is coming up…

     And some of us are thinking that we already know it is going to be exactly like every other Thanksgiving.

     The same family members: some charmingly funny and others less so, sitting around the same table, eating the same food, and -- arguing over the same issues from past years.  Having this mindset predisposes us to see only what we are already looking for.  For e.g.  when you are hungry,  and because you have food on your mind, everywhere you look, you’ll see food.  In the same way, worrying and ruminating that “Uncle Bernie is going to argue with Aunty Tilly at the table over their choice for president, or their religious leanings, or over whom the fall of apartheid most disenfranchised in the new South Africa” is what you will mainly see. 

     Granted it can be irritating and upsetting when these things happen, but if that’s paramount in your mind, you’ll miss out on the other things that are happening too.  When things can’t be changed and we wish they were different, we end up feeling bad.

     This year, to help us have an even more enjoyable holiday season, we could try approaching it from a different perspective.  A really powerful approach is to change our thoughts, and that will in turn change our reaction.  In other words, we can relate to an old situation in a new way. 

     By keeping an open mind (not liking or disliking), seeing what’s actually happening, and realizing what’s changeable and what’s not, we can skillfully negotiate the holiday season to make it a success for everyone.  We can choose to notice the kids’ enjoyment, the moments of laughter, the playful teasing interchanges, and the pleasure we gain from being with people who love and know us well.

     The real power here is that the situation may not change, but we instead can change our response to it. Start with noticing your thoughts.

     I won’t keep you…you have much shopping and preparing to do for your family Thanksgiving dinner.  

     May you enjoy the holiday, your family, and your shared meal.

Mindfulness Helps you See Miracles

     What would it be like if we could never experience satisfaction, relief or respite? Or better still:  have you ever thought about how amazing it is that we are able to feel satiation, appreciation, or change? Have you contemplated such a situation?

     Right now, some of you are thinking, oh I know the feeling of being unsatisfied, and it is surely one I don’t want to contemplate any further.  It’s true some of us struggle with recognizing the changes taking place for us.  The fact is change is always happening – sometimes these changes are wanted and sometimes they aren’t, but it nonetheless occurs. 

     Change comes in all shapes and sizes.  It is the miniscule, nondescript and ‘ordinary’ ones that we most easily overlook.  For e.g. our feelings change many times in a day and we often don’t realise it.  A perfect example is when we feel thirst.  We can drink water and that feeling of thirst is quenched.  Even if you can’t, for whatever reason, drink your fill of water, you are still able to feel a slight lessening of the discomfort of thirst when you sip some water.  The same goes for hunger, tiredness, or restlessness.  Imagine how dreadful it would be to never experience change or respite from these feelings?    

       And yet, in reality we do.  We do experience change.  And that is the miracle.  An ordinary, everyday mundane miracle.

      This past weekend I was helping coordinate a retreat.  The days were long and even though I had eaten several meals I was hungry much of the time.  As uncomfortable as the pain of that hunger was, there was also the awareness that I would be eating soon, and that that pain would and could go away.  Truly remarkable was realizing that not only would the hunger pain dissipate, but that the taste of the food itself would bring some pleasure with it.  I was stunned when this insight hit me.  Eating could be just a perfunctory function of sustaining the body, but it’s more than that – we are able to enjoy the food as it lessens hunger.  This daily oft repeated activity in many our lives is capable of awakening appreciation in us.  Do we see that?

     When we think about it, how is it that water is able to quench thirst and food stunt hunger, and simultaneously produce feelings of enjoyment and relief? 

      To see these little miracles, we need to be paying attention to our bodies, thoughts and the happenings in our lives.  Miracles are happening all the time, and if we are absent or dismiss them as ‘ordinary’ we miss out.

       Perhaps this may better illustrate my point.  Apparently kittens are born blind.  When they open their eyes, after a few days, the pathway for sight is instantly created.  If the kittens are blindfolded at birth, they are blinded for life even after the blindfolds are removed because the neural connections for sight weren’t established.  So even though there’s a world with sights, colours and textures, these kittens are never able to see it simply because their nervous systems weren’t “prepared or trained” to see it. 

      Like the kittens, we may overlook the miraculous in our lives because we haven’t created the pathways and neural connections to help us see the miracle in the ordinary.  Unlike the kittens, however; we can change our situation.  This is where mindfulness comes in. 

      Mindfulness trains us to be present and to notice.  And every time we do so, the brain and nervous system make new connections to help us see clearly.  In paying exquisite attention to the seemingly ordinary, overlooked and mundane, we begin to open our eyes to the wonders within us and around us.  Then in the midst of the turmoil and upheaval of our lives and the world, we begin to see the amazing creatures we are, the wonder of life, and the beauty of our world.

       May you learn to see the miracles in your life.

Why Being too Comfortable isn't Good For Us

    Our world becomes very small, tiny, in fact, when we avoid the things that unsettle us.  The drive to have things always go our way: food sufficiently salted, air temperature just right, traffic lights always green for us, shopping lines always empty – is our way of trying to be happy.  We know how unstable this kind of happiness can be.  Reality has a different agenda from our agenda.  Even though our striving to be comfortable is a natural inclination, it isn’t good for us.  It makes us complacent. 

     Balance is necessary:  being able to rest, relax and be comfortable is important for our nervous systems and mind and body.  So is pushing and opening ourselves to what we don’t want.  Our mental, emotional and physical health and resilience depends on some level of stress and discomfort.

     Years ago I remember looking up the definition of doldrums.  It is the ocean conditions in equatorial regions where there’s a ‘stagnation’ and persistent calmness.  There’s no wind and the ocean waters are very still.  In the days of sailing ships, this posed a big problem.  If they got stuck in the doldrums, they would have had to wait days on end, until the winds picked up to move them along.

     Being too comfortable in life is akin to being in the doldrums.  The smooth mundane waters of the doldrums, or of always being cozy, dulls the senses and makes one listless.  The sapping of our spirit and energy causes us to lose interest in and curiosity about life.  We also go into a slump whenever we retreat to the past through reliving happy occasions, or by fantasizing about the future.  Such escapism stops us from being present in the moment, and causes us to overlook the wonders unfolding before us.  Our vibrance and vitality stems from the excitement of meeting challenges.

     A river is ‘alive’ precisely because of the blocks - rocks, falls, logs, and mud banks - it encounters on its path to the ocean.  If it didn’t have these obstacles, it would simply be a sluggish stream of water.  Similarly being too comfortable and having everything going our way robs us of the opportunity to percolate and dance with life. 

     The brain’s tendency to efficiently categorize and store information about our habits, patterns, and routines somewhat hampers us because we then rely on, and expect things to go as we’ve previously experienced.  What this means is that we then effectively operate in default mode.  Or we could say we live in the past.

     Life is persistent change, even if that change is imperceptible to us from moment to moment. Our distress, pain, fear, and anxiety arises from this struggle with change. Life’s dynamism forces us to be responsive.  To respond to what’s occurring, we have to actually be in the here and now, observing what’s happening.  It means we have to:

·         be alert to the changes taking place within our thoughts, emotions and feelings, as well as the external environment of our friendships, work relationships, and casual encounters;

·         recognize we can’t rely on what worked in the past to necessarily work in every future situation.

     To broaden our world and open ourselves to experiencing what life brings each moment is the full engagement of life at all levels of our being.  Responding to change in this way, we grow. 

          The upside to being adaptably present is we appreciate life more when we notice how we cope and deal with difficulties.  This recognition empowers us to see the options available, to notice how everything changes and to appreciate the value of patience or waiting, and to understand how our stress levels pivot on the interpretation of our experiences. This is responding.  This is growth.  This is the full engagement of life. 

     To live a fulfilling and happy life is to accept life’s ups and downs and contradictions.  Take a moment now and contemplate all that you have experienced, which has helped you grow and learn about life and yourself.  You may find that those experiences both challenged and exhilarated.  From a bodily perspective, the sensations of fear and excitement are very similar – racing heart, sweaty palms, butterflies in the stomach, alertness. 

     Isn’t life amazing? Aren’t we amazing? 

     May you be brave and discover aspects of your true self today.

Working with Anger without Blaming

         As a follow up to the last article, I thought to talk about how to work with anger without blaming.

        Every day we see things that upset us – homeless veterans begging on the street, children being trafficked, animals suffering cruelty, neighbors pouring paint down street drains, which run to creeks.  I just received a notice on my neighborhood blog.  Someone was upset at a man for filling water into two five gallon bottles from a park drinking fountain; the person who posted this notice was clearly outraged because they titled the post “Stealing Water”.  So there are many things in a day that can trigger us.  How do we work with the feelings that arise, and still keep intact our own and the other person’s or peoples’ humanity?

     Anger arises when we witness an injustice.  The awakened face of anger is the ability to clearly see a wrong and to feel the pain of that injustice.  This wisdom aspect of anger also has the insight to see what is right and needed, so as to bring change or undo wrongs.  Throughout history, changes in all arenas of life were brought about by this innate drive for justice, and to end suffering in the world.    

     But anger that arises out of vengeance and the need to harm a perceived “enemy’ is the kind of anger that causes us to assign blame. When we blame, we not only harm the other person, but also ourselves.  Blaming causes us to think the other person is ‘bad’, and makes us believe we are better, different, and separate from another person.  The fact is anger is an inherent part of our nature.

    Our minds can fixate and ruminate on the wrongs we or people we love have experienced and this traps us in a continuing cycle of misery.  A story will better illustrate this point:  two monks were walking through a forest.  They saw a woman trying to cross a fast moving river.  One monk picked up the woman and carried her across the river.  His friend followed.  Later on that day, the monk who had followed said to the other monk, he couldn’t believe he’d broken a vow by touching a woman.  The other monk replied:  “I put her down hours ago but you are still carrying her”.  So our tendency to replay the wrongs we’ve endured or witnessed can bog us down in anguish and unnecessary suffering.

      By changing our perspective, we can start to work on not pointing a finger at ourselves or someone else.  And we always start with ourselves.
    We begin by getting ourselves out of the misery of ruminating the same blame story over and over in our minds.  Even when we can clearly see someone is causing pain, we work on our approach to that person or situation.  This is difficult to do.  But if our priority is to end suffering, then compassion is the wisest approach to ending it.  We remind ourselves that this person is also suffering.  Pointing a finger only increases suffering

      Anger also increases our own suffering.  Suffering exists in life; it’s not a personal failing when we suffer.  Our minds and bodies endure huge stress and damage when we are angry. 

     Change and growth typically occur in difficulty or with struggle.  So right in the intense heat of our fear and rage is when we are most challenged to remember compassion, and the shared suffering of all human beings.  But that is exactly when we need to let our innate kindness and understanding surface.

    To work with our anger and to not blame:

·         We first intend not to cause harm.

·         We don’t ignore or dismiss the fact that a person or people are causing harm.  We pause and then say no to the pain and injustice we witness, and then work to change it. 

·         We act with compassion. We remind ourselves that just as we may injure others when we are hurting, we understand that the other person must also be suffering.  It helps to think that the person doesn't know how to deal with his/her suffering, and therefore causes suffering.  Happy, safe, and peaceful people don’t willfully harm others.

·         We don't repress or act out our anger on others or ourselves, but we mindfully sit with the intense emotions roiling through us.  This means investigating the nature and texture of our anger, becoming familiar with it.  To do this requires courage.
      We pay extra attention to the stories we make up about the other person.  Our thinking causes us to ruminate and justify how we are right and the other person is wrong.  This fuels the flames.

     This entire process requires bravery, and willingness to fully face ourselves, to change, and to recognise we are no longer willing to keep repeating painful patterns.
     In working with anger in such a way we are making a choice.  We are choosing to lift our gaze away from blame and see a bigger picture;  the picture that we aren’t willing to perpetuate our own suffering and increase the misery in the world.  In our small, or maybe not so small, act of kindness and compassion, we can change the energetic pattern of aggression that is reverberating throughout our planet. 

          Our choices affect us and the world we live in.  No matter how small or private or personal we think our decision is it influences us and our interactions in the world.  And as we all live on this one tiny planet, we all experience the consequences of our individual decisions from moment to moment.

    May your choices free you from anger. 

The Difference between Critical Thinking and Judging

      I don’t enjoy cooking every day.  On the other hand, my sister, a chef, loves cooking.  She doesn’t mind coming home from a long day at work, and then to begin cooking many dishes, and even making time-consuming Indian flatbreads (roti). I laugh because even though she’s working outside the home, and I’m home all day, she will sometimes send food home with me. 

     So when I look at her industriousness in the kitchen, and I think how easily I could eat cereal for supper, I judge myself – why can’t I be different, more hard working and less lazy.  But is this helpful?

     Such thinking arises out of our ingrained, unconscious judging habit that is operating constantly.  Things are either good/bad, right/wrong, black/white, sinful/holy.  We rarely see the world and our lives clearly and without bias.  Everything is processed through the colored lens of our desires, aversions, or indifference.   Our experiences aren’t immune to such judgments -- everything we experience, do, think is being rated by us --- all the time!  And typically our conclusions are that we or others are lacking or deficient in some way. 

     So how does critical thinking differ from judging? 

     Critical thinking is the ability to see clearly what’s happening.  For example: critical thinking can be observing one car is faster than another, or that one person is more outgoing than another person.  It is a necessary and important skill for good decision making and success.

     Judging is observing, comparing, and then degrading one of the things as lesser than or lacking in some way.  So in the car example, it’s noting that one car is slower and then condemning the slower car as weaker, not well made, or flawed. So with judging there’s always negativity attached to the observation.

     The Buddha talked of laying judgment on top of pain as the two arrows.  In my case of not enjoying cooking:  the first arrow is noticing that I don’t enjoy cooking, and this is painful to me because it’s a daily task.  The second arrow is the shaming or mental anguish layered onto that original pain.  So we increase our suffering through insults added to the original injury.

     When we judge, we become myopic.  Judgments skew our ability to see the bigger picture or to healthily relate to something we’ve deemed inadequate, a failure, unfair, or wrong.   Basically we write a situation or person off as no longer being of value. Our tendency is to walk away.  We stop looking and then fail to see that every situation and person has a lesson to teach us. 

     So if we want to learn what we are here to learn, and to live our lives to their fullest potential, we need to be willing to face life’s challenges head on.  This requires that we train ourselves to remain open to difficult situations and people even when we would like to walk away.  At the core of this recognition is the understanding that joy isn’t separate from the messiness of our lives.    

     We can learn to stay with our initial pain or challenge without adding mental suffering to it by:

·         Staying present – notice when your mind wanders into the future or past; see what kind of thoughts you are having, and then come back to the present moment.

·         Getting interested in your perceptions – be curious about how your mind makes up stories and judgments about people and circumstances.

·         Staying with and exploring whatever arises in you – sit with feelings of fear, sadness, pain, anger, hate or even love, joy and tenderness.

·         Growing grateful – notice what’s going right in your life.

·         Helping others – extend a hand to someone in pain or suffering.

·         Knowing that challenges stretch us – recognize we are strong and resilient.

·         Forgiving – be gentle and compassionate with ourselves and others for judging.

·         Choosing to respond – engage life more healthily from a broader open perspective.

     And if all of this is difficult to do (which it may well be), then notice the pain that arises from struggling to become less judgmental and more mindful.  Then with kindness and humour, keep plugging away at it.

     By praciticing these steps a little bit every day, we can begin to change life-long habits of judging and harming ourselves and others.  

    May you meet your next challenge as a friend.