This experience...this discomfort...is an opportunity to awaken my heart...
as many of you know...
Pema Chodron is my teacher on so many levels...I have never met her in person...that hasn't seemed to matter...
I was scheduled to go to Shambhala Mountain Center the last week of July and attend a workshop with Sakyong and Pema together...
(my next treatment is scheduled that same week)...
WOW...that would have been something...knowing the transmission of energy as I have come to miraculously witness or so it always seems like a miracle...I have come to accept the energy I will receive without being there in person. As soon as I am able...I plan to visit Pema and study with her in Nova Scotia ...because of her teachings...I have been able to sit with the darkness of this experience and find a deeper opening to my heart...I have been able to find a deeper layer of compassion and love. Thank you Pema for your beautiful teachings and the strength they give me every moment!
...Sharing from Pema...
"Practice the five strengths, the condensed heart instructions.
There are five strengths we can utilize in our practice of awakening bodichitta. There are five ways that a warrior increases confidence and inspiration:
1. Cultivating strong determination and commitment to relate openly to whatever life presents, including our emotional distress. As warriors-in training we develop wholehearted determination to use discomfort as an opportunity for awakening, rather than to try to make it disappear. This determination generates strength.
2. Building familiarization with the bodichitta practices by utilizing them in formal practice on the spot. Whatever happens, our commitment is to use it to awaken our heart.
3. Watering the seed of bodichitta in both delightful and miserable situations so that our confidence in this positive seed can grow. Sometimes it helps to find little ways that the seed of goodness manifests in our life.
4. Using reproach-with kindness and humor-as a way of catching ourselves before we cause harm to self or other. The gentlest method of reproach is asking ourselves, Have I ever done this before?
5. Nurturing the habit of aspiring for all of us that suffering and its seeds diminish and that wisdom and compassion increase; nurturing the habit of always cultivating our kind heart and open mind. Even when we can't act, we can aspire to find the warrior's strength and ability to love."
Pema Chodron
Comfortable with Uncertainty
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