Step One. Acknowledge that you’re hooked. Step Two. Pause, take three conscious breaths, and lean in. Lean in to the energy. Abide with it. Experience it fully. Taste it. Touch it. Smell it. Get curious about it. How does it feel in your body? What thoughts does it give birth to? Become very intimate with the itch and urge of shenpa and keep

If you are inclined to train in being open-endedly present to whatever arises—to life’s energy, to other people, and to this world—after a while you’ll realize you’re open and present to something that’s not staying the same.

Does it open our heart or close it? When we’re hungry, does our discomfort increase our empathy for hungry people and animals, or does it increase our fear of hunger and intensify our selfishness? With contemplations like this we can be completely truthful about where we are but also aware of where we’d like to be next year or in five years, or

This is the spirit of delighting in what we see rather than despairing in what we see. It’s the spirit of letting compassionate self-reflection build confidence rather than becoming a cause for depression.

Chögyam Trungpa gave a teaching about this. He said that if we had nothing but smooth sailing, if our habitual patterns just dropped away, continually, week after week with no problem, we would have no empathy for all those people who continue to get hooked and act out.

The peace that we are looking for is not peace that crumbles as soon as there is difficulty or chaos. Whether we’re seeking inner peace or global peace or a combination of the two, the way to experience it is to build on the foundation of unconditional openness to all that arises. Peace isn’t an experience free of challenges, free of rough and

You come back because the present is so precious and fleeting, and because without some reference point to come back to, we never notice that we’re distracted—that once again we’re looking for an alternative to being fully present, an alternative to being here with things just exactly as they are rather than the way we would prefer them to be.

You could stop, give space, and empower the wolf of patience and courage instead of the wolf of aggression and violence.

So, we start by making friends with our experience and developing warmth for our good old selves. Slowly, very slowly, gently, very gently, we let the stakes get higher as we touch in on more troubling feelings. This leads to trusting that we have the strength and good-heartedness to live in this precious world, despite its land mines, with dignity