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Some quotes and links to readings and other resources:

 

"Wherever you are is the entry point" - Kabir


"If your everyday practice is to open to all your emotions, to all the people you meet, to all the situations you encounter, without closing down, trusting that you can do that - then that will take you as far as you can go. And then you'll understand all the teaching that anyone has ever taught." -Pema Chodron



"When we are not separating ourselves from our true nature or from the truth of the moment—whatever that might be—we are at peace, even if the moment is not peaceful. It is not the mind that learns how to accept or be intimate with the moment; it doesn’t know how! Rather it is our true nature, our vast heart that is always open, always in truth, and always touching with compassion the moment exactly as it is, that transforms our experience. This transformation occurs not by changing our experience, but by fully embracing and accepting it, seeing it with the eyes of truth rather than illusion. Whatever is here, whatever is arising is coming up to be met, to be seen, to be loved. We may have spent years or lifetimes refusing what is here, but when we begin to want the truth of our experience more than we want life to look a certain way, the truth begins to reveal itself in ever-deepening ways."
-Dorothy Hunt



Why are we so afraid? Can we explore fear profoundly? Not by running away from fear, but by facing it when it comes up. Not through thinking one's way out of it, but just wondering, —What is it?— and listening quietly, inwardly, without escaping. If I don't call it fear, don't get entangled in all my reactions to it, but just feel it in the guts, without knowing, without doing anything, then, what is it?
-Toni Packer



Be really tender with thought. The pressure we put on it is extraordinary. It's only because thought is also the great mystery of emptiness that it is able to function with all that pressure of disapproval and dislike and aversion...
That is why in all the great spiritual traditions, at their heart is tenderness - just to be kind inside, and then everything rights itself. Fear rests. Confusion rests. Everything that was perturbing the system rests. Because they know that when you are tender inside you no longer need their services, because you have returned to your true nature. -Pamela Wilson



The only human drama there is, is not wanting the experience/ sensations we are having now. See if this is true!
Not wanting the experience we are having feels uncomfortable in the body and this registers as a problem...In western psychology, what we call the subconscious mind is everything we never want to experience again and everything we think we want to experience, in other words all our unfilled desires, that we think will make us happy. All of this is our resistance to our experience NOW...

Stop. Notice what your mind is constantly busy with.
Notice if what your mind is working with in this moment brings you peace. Could you for a moment simply let go of believing that thinking will help? Could you let go of believing that tightening up will help? In this moment, being embodied awareness, aware in every cell, simply being, how is it? Notice if there is any boundary. Notice that all experience is welcome. Some call this unconditional love.
-Isaac Shapiro



Mindfulness: A Proposed Operational Definition
(Word Doc)


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