I Want To Accept Myself

I Recently Read In The Book My Stroke Of Insight By Brain Scientist Jill Bolte Taylor That The Natural Life Span Of An Emotion—the Average Time It Takes For It To Move Through The Nervous System And Body—is Only A Minute And A Half. After That We Need Thoughts To Keep The Emotion Rolling. So If We Wonder Why We Lock Into Painful Emotional States Like Anxiety, Depression, Or Rage, We Need Look No Further Than Our Own Endless Stream Of Inner Dialogue.

In A Basic Way, Acceptance Is Seeing Clearly What's Happening And Holding It With Kindness. This Is A Radical Antidote To The Suffering Of Judging Mind.

When Someone Says To Us, As Thich Nhat Hanh Suggests, "darling, I Care About Your Suffering," A Deep Healing Begins.

There Are Some Things We Can't Choose, But In Being Present We Can Choose How We Want To Relate To Them

If Our Hearts Are Ready For Anything, We Can Open To Our Inevitable Losses, And To The Depths Of Our Sorrow. We Can Grieve Our Lost Loves, Our Lost Youth, Our Lost Health, Our Lost Capacities. This Is Part Of Our Humanness, Part Of The Expression Of Our Love For Life.