Radical Acceptance

Stay together, friends. Don’t scatter and sleep. Our friendship is made Of being awake. Rumi

Buddhist scriptures expressed it centuries ago: Hatred never ceases by hatred, but by love alone is healed. This is the ancient and eternal law.

Staying on top of what is wrong with us gives us the sense that we are controlling our impulses, disguising our weaknesses and possibly improving our character.

The great being embraced him, saying, “Well done, bodhisattva, well done. Walk on through all the fears and pain in this life. Walk on, following your heart and trusting in the power of awareness. Walk on, one step at a time, and you will know a freedom and peace beyond all imagining.”

Recognizing that we are suffering is freeing—self-judgment falls away and we can regard ourselves with kindness.

Over the years we each develop a particular blend of strategies designed to hide our flaws and compensate for what we believe is wrong with us.

empty awareness is full with presence, alive with knowing. The very nature of awareness is cognizance, a continuous knowing of the stream of experience. In this moment that you are reading, sounds are heard, vibration is felt, form and color are seen. This knowing happens instantaneously, spontaneously. Like a sunlit sky, awareness is radiant in co

“I’m skimming over life and racing to the finish line—death.”

Henry David Thoreau wrote, “Dwell as near as possible to the channel in which your life flows.” By inhabiting my body with awareness, I was discovering the roots of my reactivity. I had been avoiding the unpleasant sensations that make up fear and sorrow. By opening mindfully to the play of sensations, the grip of my anger and stories naturally loo

Attention is the most basic form of love. By paying attention we let ourselves be touched by life, and our hearts naturally become more open and engaged.