Report 71

Goodness

The topic is ‘Goodness’ but I stumbled at ‘self’ again while reading the links. A general tendency of the small mind is to fix, improve or change. So this part stood out for me. Places that one gets stuck often reveal goals or desires to change without understanding/acceptance. It is easy to have hopes and fears feeding a vicious cycle of not living fully.

From One Bright Pearl Lecture by Taitaku Pat Phelan
[…] "if we are going to practice, we have to give up all hope that we will ever be any better, that our experience will ever be any more satisfying than it is now, and we have to accept ourselves just as we are as our total field of practice. To accept our self is to be still with our experience without manipulating it or trying to change the subject. This doesn’t mean that we are fixed or that the way things are is frozen or stuck and it will be this way forever. It means that we are willing to experience the pain, or joy, or boredom of this moment without trying to adjust it or avoid it. In this willingness, we find freedom."