Relax
Greetings from me!
Hello!
When I look a little more deeply at my everyday self,
at the things I do and the way I react in the moment,
it seems to me that the motive behind everything is to defend myself, to protect myself.
In truth, all I want is to protect the sacred part within me that I know by instinct,
yet through the thoughts I have come to favor (the ones I tend to depend on), stored up without my noticing,
I seem to look at the world telling myself that outside of me it is dangerous, risky, full of tension.
Those are memories.
You may want to cling to them as the true answers your own experience has taught you,
but those are memories, too.
Even something very small—for example, "I have to spend Sunday on something worthwhile"—
when you can lightly let go of even that, you may experience a link with a very rich place within you.
"I have to relax," "I need a break"—
how many times have we, living in the modern world, told ourselves these things?
We are trying to protect ourselves.
Defending is like that, and so is mindfulness;
we spend an enormous amount of time on them,
but "I have to …" is memory.
If you try letting go of "I have to …," there may be something that fits who you are right now.
When you take off the glasses of memory,
nature is nature,
that person is that person,
a stiff shoulder is a stiff shoulder,
and the walls standing in the way of your life are the shape of the memories within you.
Please take another look at your own identity.
Look forward to the feeling of those walls crumbling away.
Enjoy!
B
"Unihipili's Chatter"Tough love means living honestly with yourself.
If you cannot be honest with yourself, would it not, in most cases, be difficult to see anyone else simply as they are?
I believe that when we live truly honestly, we arrive at goodness.
That may depend on where I am focusing right now, but I think this is a book that teaches, through the way Banana Yoshimoto lives and through Irene Taira's struggling practice, a way of living that places trust in true goodness within the flow of the universe.
(2019/11/18)