Poetry
Don’t meditate to fix yourself, to heal yourself, to improve yourself, to redeem yourself, rather do it as an act of love of deep warm friendship to yourself, in this way there is no longer any need for the subtle aggression of self-improvement, for the endless guilt of not doing enough. It offers the possibility of an end to the ceaseless round of trying so hard that wraps so many peoples lives in a knot. Instead there is now meditation as an act of love.
How endlessly delightful and encouraging.
Bob Sharples
Meditation
Jon Kabat-Zinn
Here’s how mindfulness changes old patterns when you sit or practice, you are not allowing your impulses to translate into action, for the time being at least you are just watching them. Looking at them and you will quickly see that all impulses in the mind arise and pass away and that they have a life of their own. They are not you, but just thinking, just impulses and you don’t have to be ruled by them. Not feeding or reacting to impulses, you come to understand their nature as thoughts and emotions directly. This process actually burns up destructive impulses in the fires of concentration, equanimity and non-doing. At the same time creative insights and creative impulses are no longer squeezed out by more turbulent and destructive ones and are nourished and held in awareness.
Talk & Meditation: Jon Kabat Zinn