Category: Self-kindness

Keep Going

… “If you are tired, keep going.

If you are scared, keep going.

If you are hungry, keep going.

If you want to taste freedom, keep going.”
                                             

Harriet Tubman

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Mandala

When you can’t stand

your life one second

longer, this is what

you must do:

Get out of bed.

Put on clean underwear.

Put on that dress with

The green buttons and

stripes of blue.

Look out at the morning

With its expectant face

and withered leaves

Set your feet down

on the carpet. It

doesn’t matter if the

carpet is frayed yellow

Just find the patch

of sun on it where

you would lay if

you were a cat and

draw a circle around it.

This is your

mandala for the day

Study it.

More on Self-kindness

To give you a taste of where I hope to continue with this topic, here’s a wonderful poem by Naomi Shihab Nye and a quote by Pema Chodron, which, with a little tweaking, can fit your own life. And then I add something of my own along those lines.

Kindness
 
Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.
 
Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.
 
Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
 
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
it is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you every where
like a shadow or a friend.

Naomi Shihab Nye

May I treat myself

kindly

May I love myself

Just the way I am

Pema Chodron

May we all treat ourselves kindly

May we all love ourselves

Just the way we are

Introduction to Loving Kindness

Too often a side effect to chronic illness is the harsh way we treat ourselves. When we feel poorly, we often think and act poorly. On top of the difficulties we experience, we may feel we are somehow responsible for our illness or feel inept at coping with it. We think perhaps if we were someone else, we would be handling it better. We hear of spiritual masters who can transcend pain, why can’t we? Why do we still need medication? Why can’t we get a job done on time? Why can’t we do the simple task of washing dishes without it overwhelming us? On top of all that, we unconsciously send hateful thoughts to our afflicted body parts: “why won’t you just work?”

We may feel justified with these insidious self-accusations, or secretly believe we deserve the suffering we are enduring. We may wonder if maybe we did something in a past life that we are making up for now in the form of illness. Maybe we did something (or think we did) in this life that we feel is resulting in our present condition. We may even be doing something we know is contributing to our overall lack of health, like eating junk food, or smoking cigarettes.

The simple fact is even if some of these things have any credence, it never makes us feel any better to harangue ourselves. No one’s condition ever improved and no one has ever cured themselves from an illness by critical self-talk. Ask yourself this: would you ever treat a loved one as harshly as you treat yourself?