Category — dharma

I’m sure you have felt gentleness time and again for those you love or admire: your child, lover, a hero of music or politics, even your pet. You think of this creature and your heart melts. You feel how deeply you wish for their ease, and not because they “deserve” it. There actually is no reason at all for this feeling, beyond love. Your heart is simply open.

When have you ever felt this toward yourself? It is very, very important that you look at yourself in just this way. Please, starting today: soften toward this precious and irreplaceable being: YOU. All you have to do is notice her. She is like no other and has gifts to give that cannot be sourced elsewhere.

From here, you are able to feel this way for everyone, not just those you already love. In this way, by opening your heart, first to yourself and then to all beings, you open up to your own life.

Members of The Open Heart Project come up with the most excellent questions. Please join this growing community of meditators to receive meditation instruction 2x weekly via videos sent right to your inbox. It’s free. See the video above for more info.

And then pose your own question(s)!

Q: I often find that when I am getting ready to meditate or meditating, I feel like it is an “escape” and that I am avoiding “real work.” I suspect this comes from my Midwestern protestant work ethic upbringing. How common is that and what are good ways to let it go? [Read more →]

Please try to watch this everyday. It has all the truth and all the sorrow and all the joy we could ever hope for. These things are inseparable: Truth. Sorrow. Joy. There is no need to choose.

This is a wonderful project featuring women helping women to love their bodies, heal their relationship with food, and sidestep the cultural urgings to find ourselves inadequate in the looks department. The important message of this project is that we can always choose to love ourselves.

30+ women writers (including me, Julie Daley, Marianne Elliot, Anna Guest-Jelley, Angela Kelsey, my beloved Jen Louden, Amy Pearson, Kate Svoboda, and others) wrote and, in some cases, recorded readings of letters to our younger selves. My video is below and please check out all the other moving, sweet, and fierce communications on this very important and mysterious topic.

Remember: When you choose love, you have nothing to lose.

About the project:

My video:

Yesterday,  a new member of The Open Heart Project emailed to ask a very poignant question:

“How can you let go of fear of uncertainty?”

Of course we all fear uncertainty–and these days there is much to be uncertain about, whether our concerns are financial, romantic, health-related, planetary, and on and on. Of course I’m no exception.

I wish I had some magic Buddhist secret for how to stop feeling afraid and uncertain. if I did, you would be the first to know it.

Well, come to think of it, i DO know a magic Buddhist secret, sort of. [Read more →]

From a participant in The Open Heart Project:

Q: “How can I increase my mindfulness when all the stressors of my life come into play at once?”

A: I really appreciate your question about becoming more mindful when you are experiencing moments of particular stress. This is totally doable. However–if by becoming more mindful, you mean ceasing to feel stress, it’s not going to work. When you are stressed (or happy or sad or bored or frustrated, and so on) the way to become more mindful is by simply placing your attention on your experience.
[Read more →]

Sometimes it can seem impossible to find even 10 minutes to meditate. We are all so busy. I understand. The first video contains some thoughts and suggestions for realistically establishing your practice.

The second video, you guessed it, is today’s 10-minute practice.

Please forgive my rumpled appearance in both videos. It was one of those days. But still: we practice!

Questions? Comments? Post them in comments!

As I study the dharma more and more, I see without doubt that it is the key to loving relationships and that loving relationships are the key to a peaceful world. It doesn’t matter how great our intentions or strategies are for creating peace–if we don’t know how to relate one to one with our fellow humans with respect and openness, they won’t actually work.

By teaching you to manage your relationship to your thoughts, meditation also teaches you how to manage your reactions to other people. It’s that simple.

This is a really important aspect of practice to consider. It gives you the skills for becoming a force for good in this world. So if you ever harbored the notion that your practice was for you alone or felt guilty for taking time for yourself, please, please know that your practice will benefit all you encounter and is as much about loving them as it is about cultivating your own strength of mind.

The first video contains some additional thoughts on this topic.

The second video is our daily meditation practice.

Enjoy!

Love, Susan

Here is the audio version of the first video.
Here is the audio version of the second video.

Questions? Comments? Bring. Them. On. It make take me a little bit, but I answer all emails.

I was emailing with a friend today who worried that she couldn’t meditate, perhaps because she worried she was supposed to be able to empty her mind of thought or feel some sort of calmness through her practice. As you know by now, neither ceasing thought nor feeling peaceful are required before deeming your meditation practice an expression of wisdom.

Rather than changing anything about yourself, meditation begins with the opportunity to sit with yourself exactly as you are within that maelstrom of craziness we call everyday life, and relax with all your insane brilliance and ridiculous confusion. Rather than trying to slam shut the wild flow of thought or *poof* yourself into some kind of Dalai Lama – Martha Stewart hybrid, you could just let go of trying to change anything at all and allow, allow, allow everything to be completely OK just the way it is. Including yourself. Especially yourself.

Confession: Allowing shmallowing. Secretly, I used to believe that no matter what anyone said, if I just tried hard enough, meditation would indeed make me into an impassively perfect being. The first video above is a story about how I learned that would never happen.

The second video is our daily meditation practice.

Enjoy!

Love, Susan

Here is the audio version of the first video.

Here is the audio version of the second video.

Questions? Comments? Bring. Them. On. It make take me a little bit, but I answer all emails.