I need to recover a rhythm in my heart that moves my body first and my mind second, that allows my soul to catch up with me.

I need to take a sacred pause, as if I were a sun-warmed rock in the center of a rushing river.

~Dawna Markova

how to embrace our existential mysteries may feel always out of reach……

inquiry for today~   can you be connected in compassion with equanimity and grounding?

how to be

We cultivate compassion to soften our hearts and also to become more honest and forgiving about when and how we shut down. Without justifying or condemning ourselves, we do the courageous work of opening to suffering. This can be the pain that comes when we put up barriers or the pain of opening our heart to our own sorrow or that of another being. In cultivating compassion we draw from the wholeness of our experience- our suffering, our empathy, as well as our cruelty and terror. It has to be this way. Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded. It’s a relationship between equals. Only when we know our own darkness well can we be present with the darkness of others. Compassion becomes real when we recognize our shared humanity.

~Pema Chodron