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I've been thinking about the idea of "to settle the self on the self" that I first read in one of Uchiyama's books. Pat Phelan is saying the same thing, but how long it takes for the message to get through to me! Or to realize or practice.

"For me, it all comes down to, 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."

  So if I feel a bit depressed some days, that's all right. I might decide to stay with and examine this in meditation and I might then see the cause, which of itself will often dispel it. But otherwise I just accept things as they are. Hard for a resolute self-improver like me. Or am I usually too passive? Who can say if I am too this or that? It's just the way I am.