The Ride of Our Lives, Self-Acceptance

Several of us in our face-to-face group meditate together each week; tonight we ended with a focus on self-compassion.

Coming home, I was surprised to see Emotions Anononymous'  Today reading for April 23rd.  It begins,

"I neither liked nor accepted most of my feelings. I either denied them or suppressed them. This denial and suppression caused my symptoms of anxiety, panic, insomnia, depression, etc. Feelings always come out somewhere. By willpower alone I have never been able to stop feeling what I did not wish to feel. Only to the degree that I accept my feelings can I surrender them to a Power. "

Isn't self-compassion largely about accepting all of ourselves?

I find it a particularly powerful focus, to allow myself to become aware of, experience and accept my emotions.

Our Today reading offers this prayer:

"Help me to accept my feelings and then surrender them to You. [May I understand that, when they do not quickly pass], it might be I need to learn something from what I am experiencing."

I do believe this the last sentence of the Today reading with all my heart: "Feelings can only change when they are accepted and surrendered."

Feelings, embraced, are energy I can use: to be more fully me.

A once-favorite signature quote has some nice imagery for me.

"If you surrender to the wind, you can ride it. " ~Toni Morrison

Tomorrow is another day, eh Eeyore?

Sometimes I am happy, knowing our family is going to be on a new adventure.  Other times I am sad that we are going to be needing to move from our current home in order to be a part of that adventure.

Then other days I am Eeyore, perplexed, thinking, "What adventure? I don't want to be Pollyanna!"

Then I have to express my condolences to my Eeyore and say, "It's all in how you look at it. Maybe tomorrow, Ee, you'll see the good?"

The Thin Skin of Perception

I share from a reading that touched me recently, in this time of deepening darkness and season of God's light. As Hanukah and Christmas approach. 

We know that we are connected to all other life forms on the planet, yet we are distinct beings who can disregard the suffering of the torture victim, the slaughtered animal, or the starving child.

[While] other people's suffering is painful to us; we have skins that separate us from their pain.    The thickness of our skins can be good sometimes, for it lets us be whole and safe in a world where many of us are not. But if our skin is too thick, we become callous. We shut out reality and pretend--successfully sometimes--that everyone is as well off as we are.

Given these complications, it is difficult to respond to the suffering of others in a balanced way. We can lighten another's suffering. We can begin just by listening. 

We can also find ways to impact the welfare of others. We have choices in our "feelingness."

Let me be a feeling person, one who can feel compassion. 

The Serenity Prayer can show how:   With serenity, with courage and with wisdom.

December 4th, The Promise of a New Day