My lesson to Myself for today

It can be difficult to accept others and to accept ourselves.
“I should be better. I should be something different. I should have more.”

All of this is conception; it’s all mental fabrication. It’s just the mind churning up “shoulds,” “ought tos,” and “supposed tos.” All this is conceptual rubbish, and yet we believe it. Part of the solution is to recognize that these thoughts are conceptual rubbish and not reality; this gives us the mental space not to believe them.

When we stop believing them, it becomes much easier to accept what we are at any given moment, knowing we will change in the next moment. We’ll be able to accept what others are in one moment, knowing that they will be different in the next moment..

– Thubten Chodron

Founding words..

At this point in my life I am feeling a particular resonance with the following couplet from the Bible, Corinthians 13. I’m not religious at all in practice but I recognise that any collection of centuries of human wisdom is a precious resource, so I own a copy of each of the major religious texts. I take great pleasure from working on becoming familiar with them all. Similarities and differences alike. 

In the past I have been known to see through such dark glass, and have lied to myself so completely, that fact and fiction have meshed indistinguishably. A not insignificant part of my past is fiction, which is a shame and doesn’t really do justice to the person that I am. A not insignificant fact, is that I cannot ascertain which events in my past the fiction covers. So the path forward, for me, is more accepting, more open, more honest and made of clearer glass.

I imagine it like a shard of broken green-bottle, dark, jagged and dangerous to handle, dropped into the ocean. It slowly becomes weathered by the tide, the sharp edges soften, the colour fades in the sun and it becomes a smooth, pleasant jewel, weighty and satisfying to cradle in the palm of your hand.

Hence:

When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see through a glass, darkly, but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.