Mar 2
My own practice has brought me back round to looking at patterns of control. In our culture, we are heavily conditioned to try to be in control - of our emotions, of other people, of life events - and it’s such a huge delusion.
Mindful acceptance is a way of choosing how we respond to challenges that is extremely empowering. Learning to move from resistance to acceptance shifts us from an avoidance-based existence towards the ability to meet life with a sense of openness and fearlessness.
I think our desire for instant success (understandable as it is) can make it harder to access the powerful benefits of self-kindness meditation. I wanted self-kindness to make difficult feelings like anxiety and shame go away. And fast. But it's interesting that the things that have helped me the most have taken longer to take effect than other things that have helped to a lesser degree.
Have you ever had the experience of someone else telling you to 'just relax'? If only it were that simple. A stressed nervous system needs to go gradually, and it might not let go of tension straight away. From a place of accepting ourselves just as we are right now, we can begin to let go of some of the things that prevent us from experiencing true relaxation.
For an awfully long time, I believed that I could only be happy when I'd changed something about myself. Then, several years back I went through a bereavement which changed all the relationships in my life, not least the one I have with myself. Here's what I learned that helped me finally let go of self-attacking.
Sheila Bayliss 