Thanksgiving was always my favorite holiday. Actually the only holiday I cared about at all. Certainly not because of history. The whole first thanksgiving story is rife with trauma, abuse and murder. I liked thanksgiving just because of what giving thanks means.
Love is the felt experience of connection to another being. An economist says ‘more for you is less for me.’ But the lover knows that more of you is more for me too. If you love somebody their happiness is your happiness. Their pain is your pain. Your sense of self expands to include other beings. This shift of consciousness is universal in everybody, 99% and 1%.
Us human beings. We all want the same thing. We are all so much more alike than not. I try to remember this daily when I am unhappy with anyone in my life, friend or foe.
"We numb vulnerability...we are the most in debt, obese, addicted and medicated adult cohort in US history."
Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded. It's a relationship between equals. Only when we know our own darkness well can we be present with the darkness of others. Compassion becomes real when we recognize our shared humanity.
These are all stories of recovery that involve freedom from drugs/medications. Most everyone on these pages were told they would need drugs for the rest of their lives and proved psychiatry sorely wrong. ... [click on title to read the post]
Now I want to introduce a different type of suffering, one that can be particularly difficult to unravel. Over my years of teaching, I've noticed that there's a particular type of sufferering that is sticky, pervasive, and often very hard to find your way our of. I've come to call this "generational sufferering." The notion of generational suffering is based on the fact that each of us comes from a generational line, which goes as far back in time as we can imagine, back even to the original human beings, our original ancestors themselves.
Lovingkindess meditation can be very powerful and healing both. This is a description of how to practice.
Most of us will do anything to avoid being wrong. But what if we're wrong about that?
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