From Codependent No More: “To honor the self is to preserve an attitude of self-acceptance — which means to accept what we are, without self-oppression or self-castigation, without any pretense about the truth of our being, pretense aimed at deceiving either ourselves or anyone else.”
More notes from Anushka Fernandopulle Dharma Talk on the evolution of our practice:
We have to renew our relationship with our practice and others, to keep alive the meaning of what it is that you’re doing. You came to practice:
- Suffering.
- Stress Reduction.
- Meditation as Mental Fitness (Preparing Yourself).
- To rest physically & mentally not have to be productive.
- Learn more about the eight-fold path (start taking the whole medicine).
- Investigation: Learn to observe (if you want to understand your mind. “Let’s see in my own experience.” And retreat as “going into the Lab.” (you might have different questions for your lab experiment).
- Stress induction: The more that I practice, I see the ways in which I’m NOT present and kidnapped by greed, hatred, and delusion and not aligned and fully together.
- Integration: Meaning of the word Sati (“mindfulness” or “remembering” re-membering the limbs of our physical and spiritual bodies).
- Dharma: Re-alignment of the truth as the way things are or with nature — about the ways things operate that we can find out for ourselves right here, right now. Understanding on a deeper and intellectual level.
- Awakening or Enlightenment (not in “are we there yet” impatience but believe in our potential for freedom — you don’t know when it will happen). Rather than trying to get rid of something difficult from our lives, we want to move towards that which is wholesome or that we admire.
- Practice can become a devotional practice (faith in Daham, oneself) — devotion honoring something bigger than oneself, my struggles / larger power source; getting out of the limited view that someone has — letting go of being controlled by our problems, for example.
- Cultivation: water and feed, planting the seed of metta — of mindfulness, of all these different wholesome states and stop / NOT feeding greed and other obstacles to enlightenment, etc.
- Practice as sacred ritual: What if I did this with more passion, to tend it tenderly, and honor it.
- Of resting in NOT knowing: Develop of an ability to stay grounded in courage, and being fully present in whatever arises, and NOT knowing what’s happening next. You NEVER know anything — checking your arrogant mind.