Hi all, just wanted to share some of what I'm reading a bit of when I get a chance.

from Pema Chodron's book "When Things Fall Apart"

"Generally speaking, we regard discomfort in any form as bad news. But for.. people who have a certain hunger to know what is true.. feelings like disappointment, embarrassment, irritation, resentment, anger, jealousy, and fear, instead of being bad news, are actually very clear moments that teach us where it is that we're holding back. They teach us to perk up and lean in when we'd rather collapse and back away. They're like messengers that show us, with terrifying clarity, exactly where we're stuck. This very moment is the perfect teacher, and lucky for us, it's with us wherever we are.

..The "events and people in our lives who trigger our unresolved issues could be regarded as good news. We don't have to go hunting and looking for anything. We don't need to try to create situations where we reach our limit. They occur all by themselves, with clockwork regularity.
Each day, we're given many opportunities to open up or shut down. The mos precious opportunity presents itself when we come to the place where we think we can't handle whatever is happening. It's too much. It's gone too far. We feel bad about ourselves. There's no way we can manipulate the situation to make ourselves come out looking good. No matter how hard we try, it just won't work. Basically, life has just nailed us.
.. Most of us do not take these situations as teachings. We automatically hate them. We run like crazy. We use all kinds of ways to escape--all addictions stem from this moment when we meet our edge and we just can't stand it. We feel we have to soften it, pad it with something, and we become addicted to whatever it is that seems to ease the pain. There are so many ways that have been dreamt up to entertain us away from the moment, soften its hard edge, deaden it so we don't have to feel the full impact of the pain that arises when we cannot manipulate the situation to make us come out looking fine."

.. "Basically, disappointment, embarrassment, and all these places where we just cannot feel good are a sort of death. We've just lost our ground completely; we are unable to hold it together and feel like we're on top of things. Rather than realizing that it takes death for there to be birth, we just fight against the fear of death."

Letting go is okay. It facilitates a chance for rebirth by learning new ways, like what we do in our therapy.



ECHOES