moodybreadcrumbs

Intro: Waking up from zombieland

• You know what’s interesting about lone wolves? They’re sick. Wolves are pack animals, and they often mate for life. So if you see a wolf by itself, there’s actually something wrong with it.
• …the trees didn’t do well at all. They wouldn’t grow straight. The scientists found that it was because there was no resistance in the biosphere: no storms, no winds, no extremes of temperature, which are the things that strengthen the heartwood of the tree, that give it its resilience.
• It means to love all the things about someone, even the things that frighten you or that you don’t understand.

Committing to living with intimacy

• “For me, forgiveness and compassion are always linked: how do we hold people accountable for wrongdoing and yet at the same time remain in touch with their humanity enough to believe in their capacity to be transformed?” – Bell Hooks
• Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” – James Baldwin
• On relationships: But actually, I was the one who needed to shift. I needed to change the dynamic in myself. I need to continuously practice being the protector for the young part of me.
  • We’re the ones who need to do the changing, even if it’s totally terrifying.
• Establishing trust in that feeling of peace [taking a moment to stop when faced with conflict or discomfort] is what allows us to take refuge, to commit totally to wakefulness in the midst of difficult moments.
• But until we’re willing to have the courage and commitment to truly change the way we functions, then “taking refuge” is just some idea.
• “Make your ego porous. Will is of little importance, complaining is nothing, frame is nothing. Openness, patience, receptivity, solitude is everything.” – Rainer Maria Rilke

Living like everything matters

• I am me because of you
• What actually matters is just showing up to tune in to what’s happening in front of you and all around you, and to know that “for here/there is no place that does not see you.” This is how we are of service to others

Relaxing into suffering

• There’s something very significant about the term “bearing,” because what we’re witnessing is not always pretty, and learning to bear it can be painful. I think of the wonderful Blake quote: “And we are put on this earth a little space / that we may learn to bear the beams of love.” Sometimes the difficulty is fear of love.

Getting in touch with and speaking the truth

• “It takes everything to be free.” We have to be willing to truly be in the layers and discomfort together. With shared commitment, it is possible, and preciously rare. Both people need to be fully willing to get into the muck and learn to be in it together. When this is possible, my experience is that a deeper intimacy and trust arises

Practice loving

• As human beings bumbling around this world, we’re not always going to be in deep emotional attunement with each other. But that’s OK, because we can come into that attunement if both people are willing to be uncomfortable, have direct conversations, and stay in relationship.

Reversing withholding

• Whenever you set out in life, you’re going to encounter difficulty, awkwardness, discomfort, and pain. That’s guaranteed. How can we learn to keep opening up and out in the face of it? It’s the people who have the willingness to work with the resistance and to stay with what’s true to them that are the people who inspire change for others.

Allowing anger to flow by not fearing it

• “Anybody can become angry – that is easy, but to be angry with the right person and to the right degree at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right way – that is not within everybody’s power and is not easy.” – Aristotle