What we seek is the ability to encounter life openly, freely and with soul. We cannot control what comes to us, what moods arise, what circumstances befall us. What we can do is work to maintain our adult presence, keeping it anchored and firmly rooted. This enables us to meet our life with compassion and to receive our suffering without judgments.

Self-compassion is not an event, but an ongoing, daily practice. It is the root practice for our inner life and also for our relational lives. I have given many talks on shame and have shared how we want to be in loving relationships, while simultaneously hating ourselves. Our ability to receive love is proportional to our capacity to welcome all

Rebecca del Rio offers a poem, “Prescription for the Disillusioned,” as an invitation to renewal and beginnings. Come new to this day. Remove the rigid overcoat of experience, the notion of knowing, the beliefs that cloud your vision. Leave behind the stories of your life. Spit out the sour taste of unmet expectation. Let the stale scent of

“I noticed that you don’t talk about progress in your work.” I said, “No. I don’t see the soul moving in a linear way, from point A to point B. Sometimes it moves downward or sideways, sometimes it regresses, and at other times it holds still and doesn’t move. Progress is one of our culture’s most cherished fictions, but it can do great harm when

When I work with groups on the topic of self-compassion, I often begin by describing our time together as a project in “non-self-improvement.” So often our efforts at change in our lives mask subtle and not-so-subtle acts of self-hatred. We attack portions of our life with a vengeance, fully believing that our weakness or inadequacy, our neediness,

You can search throughout the entire universe for someone who is more deserving of your love and affection than you are yourself, and that person is not to be found anywhere. You, yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection. —BUDDHA

In fact, we could say that life is one continuous act of remembering, of gathering ourselves back together again and again, and living from the “deep well of things as they are.”

Deepens Our Connection to Source The German mystic Meister Eckhart wrote, “God is a deep underground river that no one can dam up and no one can stop.”3 This is a beautiful image, but how do we tap into the eternal source of clear water? Any intentional practice can be a way to dig our well. Silence, prayer, writing, dancing, painting—any act that

is