From my journal for July 3:<\/p>\n
Etty talks about accepting both high and low tides in relationship, and that sounded like a good idea.\u00a0 <\/span>Acceptance is something I can practice, unlike the letting go piece which I don\u2019t do well at all.\u00a0 <\/span>So I got out Radical Acceptance<\/a>.\u00a0 <\/span>She talks about how the Buddha teaches that there is no \u201cself,\u201d no independent self, we are all connected.\u00a0 <\/span>Something about that felt uncomfortable to me.\u00a0 <\/span>No, I am me<\/span>!\u00a0 <\/span>Why do I want to be this person who is such a failure?\u00a0 <\/span>What if I could just step back from her and love her, this woman who is feeling so bad about herself?\u00a0 <\/span>Somehow my heart goes right out, like it does to people who say they are having a hard time.\u00a0 <\/span>I see the problem with the slide show<\/a>.\u00a0 <\/span>I want to impress people, not share something I love.\u00a0 <\/span>If it\u2019s not about sharing something I love, I don\u2019t want to do it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Oh, yes, I remember when I stopped working on “Written in Blood” when I realized I was trying to prove I deserve to live<\/a>. Building Neskaya, I never thought once about impressing people, or proving anything about myself. I realize that worrying about “me” as being antithetical to “connected with all” is one of those paradoxes that the rational materialist paradigm has a hard time with. My individual qualities are the gift I have to give to the world, but I also am connected to all and part of the whole as a cell is “connected to” and part of the whole body.<\/p>\n
Reading Radical Acceptance I am finding lots of suggestions for how to handle the parts of my life I have a hard time with. One important suggestion is to pay attention to my body. Often feelings that I’m uncomfortable with are in my body, if I pay attention to them instead of trying to make them go away I have a chance to find out what’s bothering me, at which point I can do something about it. I noticed recently that when I got a sense of what I was uncomfortable about, it was a situation with a friend, the uncomfortable feeling in my body went away. I still had the issue I was uncomfortable about, but now I can see what to do about it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
From my journal for July 3: Etty talks about accepting both high and low tides in relationship, and that sounded like a good idea.\u00a0 Acceptance is something I can practice, unlike the letting go piece which I don\u2019t do well … Continue reading