Acceptance & Forgiveness Toward Oneself

Acceptance & Forgiveness

Bring to mind a person you feel angry or annoyed at, and ask yourself what exactly it is that you dislike in him or her. Once you have identified that, check: “Is this something that I have in myself? Have I ever behaved like that?” If you are able to find in yourself the same thing (or something similar) that you don’t like in the other person, the solution is to learn acceptance and forgiveness toward yourself. When you can be more tolerant and compassionate toward yourself, with whatever faults you have, you will be better able to accept others as they are, and less likely to get angry at them.


Awakening the Kind Heart
Kathleen McDonald

What’s Happening Right Now?

This Moment

Everything is happening right now. There is no other time. Freedom, peace, joy, suffering, sadness, birth, aging, sickness, and death are all found in this moment. In order to understand your life and yourself, you must first come to this understanding.


A Fool’s Guide to Actual Happiness
Mark Van Buren

What Was “In The Beginning”?

In the Beginning

In the beginning was not the word; that much is clear. Not that the universe of the living was ever simple, quite the contrary. It was complex from its inception, four billion years ago. Life sailed forth without words or thoughts, without feelings or rea­sons, devoid of minds or consciousness. And yet living organisms sensed others like them and sensed their environments. By sensing I mean the detection of a “presence”—of another whole organism, of a molecule located on the surface of another organ­ism or of a molecule secreted by another organism. Sensing is not perceiving, and it is not construct­ing a “pattern” based on something else to cre­ate a “representation” of that something else and produce an “image” in mind. On the other hand, sensing is the most elementary variety of cognition.


Feeling and Knowing: Making Minds Conscious
Antonio Damasio