Happiness Lies Not In Finding What Is

Perhaps The Biggest Tragedy Of Our Lives Is That Freedom Is Possible, Yet We Can Pass Our Years Trapped In The Same Old Patterns...we May Want To Love Other People Without Holding Back, To Feel Authentic, To Breathe In The Beauty Around Us, To Dance And Sing. Yet Each Day We Listen To Inner Voices That Keep Our Life Small.

There Are Stories We Take On From Our Culture, And There Are Stories Based On Our Own Personal History. Some Of Those Stories Lock Us In Limiting Beliefs And Lead To Suffering, And There Are Others That Can Move Us Toward Freedom.

Imagine You Are Walking In The Woods And You See A Small Dog Sitting By A Tree. As You Approach It, It Suddenly Lunges At You, Teeth Bared. You Are Frightened And Angry. But Then You Notice That One Of Its Legs Is Caught In A Trap. Immediately Your Mood Shifts From Anger To Concern: You See That The Dog's Aggression Is Coming From A Place Of Vulnerability And Pain. This Applies To All Of Us. When We Behave In Hurtful Ways, It Is Because We Are Caught In Some Kind Of Trap. The More We Look Through The Eyes Of Wisdom At Ourselves And One Another, The More We Cultivate A Compassionate Heart.

If Attachment Then Carries Forward In A Way That's Not Healthy, We Need To Let It Be There Without Making It Wrong And Bring As Compassionate And Honest Attention To It As Possible. Honor That This Is Part Of Being Human, But It's Important To Know When It's Getting In The Way.

I Speak A Lot About What I Call "the Trance Of Unworthiness" Which Is Really Epidemic In Our Culture, This Sense Of "i'm Not Enough," Or "something's Wrong With Me." Most Of Us Have Some Level Of It Because Our Culture Has All These Standards (handed Down Through Our Families) Of What It Means To Be Okay.