So much of our everyday life is necessarily transactional. From the essentials of a weekly shop to the desires of coffee, retail therapy and other stimulating experiences, we have so many opportunities to observe what motivations, distractions and sometimes delusions drive our choices, and where generosity and appreciation have a part to play in our dealings with others.

The last year and a half on a market stall has been a window on my own and others’ transactional reflex and the presence and at times absence of generosity that accompanies it.

I still remember the cushion I didn’t release to a young person who would have spent all their money to buy it ….a choice on reflection I would so happily change in place of the higher price the sale eventually realised. At times it’s other’s attitudes, from mild surprise to the downright derogatory that have caught my attention, particularly when the price displeases. Lost in that moment is the recognition that the process of sourcing, curating, setting up, let alone the hours spent in all kinds of weather week after week are all an unseen part of the value of the item, the market and those who collectively give it a heartbeat.

The irony is not lost on me reflecting on my own hunter gatherer phase, consuming in French flea markets more than 20 years ago. Whilst I always appreciated chatting with traders, I too was seduced by my eye for a bargain and the unusual to give much attention to the values and independent spirit that brought these ephemeral collections and their temporary custodians together each week.

Whilst very much a novice, I’m developing the ability to roll with the punches learning from those with a lifetime experience of not taking the mood of the market or impact of the weather personally. Learning how to brush off the insincere and appreciate the authentic is an essential skill that only evolves with time. I’ve found it’s not a process for the faint-hearted revealing as it does my insecurities and the opportunity to stand tall whatever unfolds. I’ve been helped along in no small way by the inclusivity and open-handed sharing of those traders who recognise the market is like an eco-system that relies on the health of many contributions. They have shown a kinder way of relating that is often absent in our lives.

I have found there are also many other rewards:
Treasure discovered through others’ eyes, re-purposing of the discarded, be it a fish kettle for eco-dying or a woven heart for a witch themed photo shoot.
Conversations recognising and admiring the craft and skill of making – the hours spent in creating through form, colour and pattern, passed down through generations.
Forgotten memories – like the 1970s coffee cups, still unsold, a prompt to remember loved ones no longer present.
Glimpses into parallel lives - sharing the moment of inspiration to fill a small papier mache pot with treats for a child at Christmas.

Alongside the light, surprising moments, this spontaneous sharing can also reveal deep truths, personal struggles, illness, loss and financial uncertainty. When there is time and opportunity to listen, the difficult becomes possible to express, simply because the environment allows. In these instances, privacy gives way to candour and fear of judgment to trust.

I have seen too how the market can give a literal direction and purpose where there might be none: to keep going down the street, putting one step in front of the other when each step is less secure without a stick and, with time at home more alone than at any other stage in life, a place to feel the elements together and share the knowing of a long life.

At these times precious fragments of our inner world are shared, our hopes, our memories, and our loving nature amongst former possessions, ready and waiting for a new life. The market is a mirror, revealing the way we relate, value and appreciate, a recurring invitation to share, connect and be generous. It is here in the otherwise ordinariness of our transactional living that the possibilities of a deeper communication, however fleeting, is always present and the magic of the market is revealed. Whether we see it or not, just like any eco-system, its potential to thrive is down to us.

As  a child we are naturally curious and trusting, the world around us exploding into life through our all our senses. We freely met resistance, flow and space in a willing exploration, a sour taste rejected, a tumble from loss of balance,  the simple delight in a muddy puddle or a line of ants. Our ineptitude is no barrier to learning. We feed our memory with new and novel experiences, sometimes painful sometimes joyful.
 
We learn from other reactions, patterns of approval and encouragement, chastisement and control. As we grow, the novel becomes the familiar, both helping us navigate our world but also dulling our initial excitement ingraining habits and patterns of behaviour, some helpful and some destructive. Gradually we lose our natural trust in the validity of our inner experience learning instead to look outwardly seeking approval for the correct experience and response.  
 
The Buddha’s teaching shows us how we can rewind and look afresh at the world around us, recovering the childlike lens we have lost, together with a growing discernment about what is really governing our experience.
 
Just like the toddler making sense of a new physical world and the excitement of a flight of stairs and the distress of an unexpected barrier, we come to face ourselves and our utter ineptitude in handling both the thrill seeking and the conflicts within us. These are our first steps into a hidden landscape of interior resistance, inner drive, flow and space.
 
Awakening to this inner world is the humbling experience we need. To see how we are routinely driven by our emotions and desires, how we’re deluded about these impulses and how we need to see the fuller picture showing us where we have identified with the sweeter versions as well as victim versions of ourselves.
 
Like the small child we have all been, and all still are in one way or another, happily we each have the potential in this lifetime to grow up and reframe our relationship with ourselves with support, connection and above all love. It’s a great journey of hope and healing, whether we are coping with feeling isolated and let down or have simply lost our connection to a sense of ease and the simple joys of life.
 
One of the pragmatic instructions in the Buddha’s teaching is that we do not need to go over and unpick everything that has been causing us distress. Instead all that is needed is a turning of our gaze inwards to tune into the inner movements that govern our experience right now and, with the fresh gaze of a child recover our capacity to trust.
 
It is a deeply freeing insight that short circuits our ruminating strategies and tendencies to keep seeking answers outside of ourselves. Instead, investigating in this way means we can learn to see and feel how our habits come to life and how they repeat. As we tune into how exhausting this ineptitude is, we can re-orientate inwardly, learning how to trust in the face of inner conflict, discovering in the process what is needed to sustain our energy and keep ourselves level.  As our experience grows, the troublesome stories of our past lose their tenacious grip on shaping the direction of our future and we can ready ourselves for the new chapters of our life, more steady and free.
 
 

All of us can relate to times we’ve felt exhausted, emotionally drained and disappointed in ourselves; times where a familiar narrative leads to an emotional hijack that resonates from the past and a distress pattern we can’t contain, control or prevent.  It doesn’t matter how much we determine it won’t happen again, we seem to find ourselves in the messy reality of picking up the pieces, feeling fragile, uncared for and sad. These cycles that can play out repeatedly in relationship, family, work or social exchange keep signalling us to ask the question – how can we get out of these cycles which cause so much stress and trauma?

Recognising the validity of this question without any clue of an answer is not as hopeless as it first seems. The smallest a seed of awareness – the one that allows us to notice we’re caught up in a repetitive pattern is our starting point. This awareness along with a spark of curiosity to investigate what’s going on and an openness to attend to ourselves in a different way is all we need.

The Buddha explained this was all we needed to understand how we experience our world and all that happens in it. It’s possible to change these patterns and have the confidence to  author a new story, one that feels wholesome, one in which we feel cared for and emotional balance is realisable.

He described a framework that not only explains the process of conditioning which gives rise to our repetitive patterns but sets out the steps to tone and train ourselves away from what’s sustaining them, towards the freedom of release. At an essential level it’s an energetic training that addresses what feeds these patterns re-directing our energy towards our wellbeing and happiness. 
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Forgiveness is an important part of this framework. Repetitive patterns, however deep, are still sensitive to the power of release that forgiveness brings. Forgiveness is a process that thankfully does not need to understand or recognise all that has happened or why it has occurred. It creates a healing environment that allows access to the deeper layers of mind which are sensitive to energy and nurtures the conditions for releasing the source that fuels our repetitive patterns. With practice, we find the way to exit the cycles that cause so much stress and trauma and author that new story, the one that feels wholesome, where we understand how to take care of ourselves and restore our emotional balance.

Throughout our life we keep meeting the delusion that our happiness rests only in the hands of others. At times this can feel intoxicatingly wonderful and at others hopelessly lost. We don’t realise that these cycles of boom and bust; the whirlwind romances, the abyss of an ending, and every feeling tone in between are all part of the same story. As we imprint the known onto the unknown with our version of love, laden with expectations and assumptions, we keep confirming our identity as we believe it to be. We tend towards believing our struggles lie exclusively in forces outside ourselves and so unknowingly stay in an economy of love where we can’t help but trade in securities in place of truth.

The system we’ve invested in finally crashes when we are left alone – it’s then, in the absence of soulmates, children, lovers, the best of friends, teachers, pets when we grieve for the experience that no longer births in conditions that have changed. Whether a relationship brought fulfilment, joy and connection and/or the very opposite and every feeling tone in between, we are left in disarray, confused and unrecognisable to ourselves in the space that remains. Usually we propel ourselves outwardly for relief and, if we are fortunate, we find the solace of friends who offer space and earth in our spinning and help us re-direct our energy in ways that sustain us. This support can be a true blessing but sometimes we have only ourselves to rely on. It’s often when we find ourselves scraping the bottom of the barrel that we find we are in fact ready to meet ourselves beyond the reference points of the old system. 

This is the time metaphorically to return to the womb, to recognise our smallness but also the room to expand. To help us feel comfortable and to hold ourselves softly in this birthing space, we need a living communication between the known and the unknown. It is here in the womb of our being, we find how love is a process and not a destination. Each pulse that brings life to a thought, a word, a movement has its own genesis beyond what we know, but how we nurture the growth of what is forming is an open road and up to us the way we go. If we wish, we can learn to meet everything that arrives without resisting our inner reality. This living communication gives us an exit from ways in which we are a victim in our story bringing new beginnings into every movement.  Seeing and loving as a flow of experience brings us to a state of calm and ease with every point of tension and hardness that previously brought us to solidify. Instead of crystalising into a singular perspective, we can soften what’s causing division and disconnect and let what’s truly light shine. This discovery of how love is a process means our old personal versions, laden with expectations and assumptions lose their grip and we are finally free to join the story we were always meant for. 

​Over the years Hugh has had the privilege to meet many people who have shared different experiences and challenges whilst seeking support and restoration to re-find balance.

Some have been living with life-long chronic conditions where pain has diminished their everyday life, others have faced diagnoses of terminal illness or abrupt loss. Whether it’s a seismic shift or the everyday we are dealing with – the restless, the hot and searing, the lethargy that sinks inwards beneath the skin or the numbness of a black hole inside us, at some stage all of us find ourselves out of our depth and at sea with what we are facing.

​These changing tides of somatic experience and differing flows of emotion are a natural part of our life journey but so too is the healing that can restore balance.

Such is the interdependence of our experience that: to find healing we need to live our life and to find life we need to heal.  “What does it mean to live our life?” and “what do we need to heal?” 

We can all spend a lot of time re-working the past and speculating about the future, attempting to reinvent or invent what is beyond our control. These are very energy consuming activities and are addictive for our minds. They not only deplete us in our everyday life but create a false perspective on reality and turn our world upside down.  

These energy sapping ruminations of the mind can mean we are not fully present or appreciative of pleasant experiences be they personal or shared, too wrapped up in anxieties that may never happen or stuck in an emotional hangover that’s making us miserable. 

Emotional imbalance, with its fault finding, self-criticism and judgement, mean we develop habits of closing-down as a way of defending ourselves from the uncomfortable. We hold onto harshness, animosity, resentment, discontent and restlessness letting it wear us down. It takes us away from being generous and kind with ourselves leading to increasing exhaustion or an unsustainable rush and then a crash.  

These experiences point us towards what we’ve found to be the most important expression of healing, that is the restoration of energetic balance where tension dissolves and we return to feeling light and expansive, our energy flowing to its fullest capacity. It takes patience and courageous effort to learn to trust rather than tense to allow the healing that is natural for us to restore balance in this way.

​We need to experience how to be comfortable in ourselves to meet uncomfortable sensations and underlying patterns of tension rather than follow our habitual patterns of avoidance and pushing through or away. This allows us to reconnect with our loving and compassionate heart, opening-up with generosity to all the tight places where we have unknowingly rejected and abandoned ourselves in difficult moments. Holding ourselves softly in this way restores our energetic balance and helps us grow a relationship of love with ourselves, learning in each new moment to have the courage within to trust rather than tense whatever we are facing.  

As we give time and energy to our inner life like in this way, we can observe our reflexes to look outwardly for comfort, distraction or projection onto others soften and then at different times no longer arise. The invitation to keep trusting and not tensing is an open one for the whole of our life journey and we come to realise nothing is ever certain or fixed. and only this relationship can sustain, nourish and heal us. This constant change invites us over and over to find the natural healing we need to live our life, to grow a relationship of love with ourselves and so discover what it means to live our life.

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It can feel very personal when things we take for granted suddenly change. Many of us experience this through falling ill, grief, a change of circumstances or relationships and a multitude of other different situations. Recently for me, it came with a change in environment. 

Having arrived early in Leh in Ladhak to co-lead a retreat, I had allowed myself a few days to acclimatise. One of the challenges of being more than 11000 ft above sea level is activities you take for granted don’t happen in the same way. Whether it’s walking a few hundred metres which takes so much more effort or waking at 3am in the morning feeling there isn’t enough oxygen to breathe, your perspective is quickly reframed about simple movement, a usual night’s sleep and even the inhale and exhale that keeps you alive. It brings an enforced slowing down, and before long, every exertion prompts the reflection, is it necessary, can it be done more simply, or not at all?

As each day progressed, I found myself feeling much the same, and rather than acclimatising to the altitude, I was having to acclimatise to a new sense of limitation. Any temptation to ignore this and push through was soon dispelled by a body that wasn’t co-operating. What started as an inconvenience was gradually evolving into a teacher, and in the process, I noticed my mind becoming quieter, less scattered, more centred.

As the days moved on and the retreat started, I had been reflecting how this new experience was simply another opportunity/necessity in which to apply the principles of practice that are the bedrock of the Buddha’s teaching.
I realised that what I felt as a physical restriction, was actually an energetic one and if I kept making the effort to keep my mind free and move intentionally with the body’s vital energy, a new-found freedom of movement was possible in spite of the lower oxygen levels.  Whilst I was moving in a slower more considered way, none the less it felt effortless and light and there was a sense of space and ease in my mind and body.  My sense of limitation and frustration was a question of attitude, not altitude and once I recognised that they disappeared. 

At times of change like this we face a clearer view of the nature of reality the Buddha talked about; how impermanent our experience truly is and, how Dukkha feels - that sense of unease, dissatisfaction or suffering with experience that occurs whenever we are in a state of resistance about whatever is happening. All this points us towards practising a different way: a way of relating to ourselves in which we learn to meet resistance with patience, acceptance and love.

None of this is a rational learning but one which asks us to listen rather than solve and to soften around resistance however uncomfortable its manifestation. This is why our formal practice in the yoga and the meditation is all about how we relate to tension, how we meet its edges, how we grow our intuition and direct our energy to soften around these edges and keep smiling. As we do this we learn how to listen in to structures of support and make the effort needed to shift from our habitual states of resistance into a state of acceptance and love. 

Our practice can give us brief experiences where this happens; and when it does, we momentarily drop out of our habitual modes of thinking and doing, and recognise we are listening in a way that reveals a spacious freedom and lightness where previously we were caught up in tension and tightness. Each time this happens we experience release and a sense of uplift. This wholesome feeling builds confidence that the effort we are making is worth repeating and shows us we are not as stuck with the identity of tension and all the manifestations of Dukkha as we think.
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In this way we can re-orientate ourselves to encounter change with acceptance and love and begin to flow with life rather than against its current as the Buddha taught. As we investigate more and make the effort to listen in a way that opens us up to experience, we will find our teacher in many forms.

 
The practice of Yoga has come to mean many things to many people and is embraced widely for its wonderful physical benefits and regulation of our day to day mental health. For some this is sufficient as this experience of Yoga has fulfilled its purpose. For others, the physical postures can be an end to pursue in itself, expressed through ever more challenging and complex postures with the harnessing of physical discipline to execute them. Like many other forms of physical ability this requires both a mental development and discipline (often identified as mindfulness) coupled with intense physical development.

Whether we’re practicing to feel better or seeking to develop our physical capacity is this all Yoga and mindfulness have to offer? Is our Western emphasis on the physical aspects of yoga backed with an increasing emphasis on Western knowledge of anatomy and physiology particularly in reference to exercise changing our understanding and experience of these practices.

In the words of the Zen proverb, are we in danger of mistaking the pointing finger (our physical practice) for the moon (the nature of our mind and the world around us, our energetic connection, clear sightedness). Certainly we should look after our body and maintain our health as best as our circumstances allow, without that we won’t have the guiding finger encouraging us to look more deeply.  Beyond that our physical practice is there to point towards a wider truth and it’s our task to see for ourselves what it’s pointing at. As we re-orientate ourselves, we come to understand that technical excellence or symptom relief are not end points but by-products of the practice and then other important discoveries are made.

How do we look more deeply? 

This happens when our intention changes from development of our physical body towards development of our mind. Once we accept that our development is not outward but inward we start to experience our body in a different way as an essential part of this process. We find an energetic connection that links the leaning of our mind with our physical experience. As our mind moves, our body feels different. We practice not to dominate physically, but to listen so that our body becomes a map of our mind and we can move into each moment from a place of caring and compassionate presence that feels spacious, boundaryless. Gradually everything we experience shifts towards referencing the moon and not the finger.   

When we re-focus on the moon in this way, surprising things happen. Outwardly our postures and movement become light, flowing, effortless, we move in ways that strength and effort alone cannot achieve. Inwardly, the colour and brightness that came from disappointment or excitement with the sense of failing or achieving makes way for a sense of transparency, a playful, open-hearted simplicity, that is peaceful and patient with each unfolding moment, however it is. It’s a process that feels far more enriching and wholesome and expansive than the passing attraction/aversion of colour and brightness and one our practice slowly teaches us to take into daily life.  
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It's from this place we observe the wholesome patterns and habits that support an emerging transparency, the unwholesome ones that take it away and, importantly, the choices that make the difference.  As the practice becomes one of unveiling these more subtle inner exchanges, we begin to understand what the moon has to teach us and feel a deepening gratitude to the finger for pointing the way.   

Not long ago I was in the mountains alone, travelling light with just a bivouac for shelter. The weather was poor and then got worse. Deep in cloud, my senses tuned into every shape and form in the landscape to find the best way through. I was in a deep state of listening, listening to myself and the wider environment, the landscape, the strength of the wind, judging the steepness of the ground, assessing risk, appreciating the security of a handhold or the presence of an animal track when there was one, taking care when there wasn’t. Safely navigating meant accepting my vulnerability and through it dealing more honestly with each situation, not battling with, but blending with the natural world, remaining humble, open to the possibility I might be wrong, willing to retrace my steps and set a new direction. It was a process of constantly checking my assumptions, expectations and hopes with the reality around me right now.  

My plans to sleep out under the stars had been transformed over the previous hour into a search for shelter, somewhere out of the prevailing wind and horizontal rain. I began to examine more closely the inclination of exposed rocks as potential protection from the wind and rain, the slope of the ground and how the water drained as a suitable resting place. Now, everything about the landscape took on a particular importance and I smiled at how my intention had changed my relationship to my surroundings - now I was no longer passing through,  and a deeper integration was dawning. 

I found a small sheltered spot, just big enough to lie down where sheep had levelled the ground and grazed the vegetation creating a more comfortable base for sleeping.  With the promise of rest and a place to cook, I felt lifted with a sense of gratitude.  The rapidly fading light added a simplicity to the priorities at hand, to eat, create shelter, get warm and then sleep. Everything I did was in tune with the immediate surroundings, none of it perfect but together it was enough and that was good.  

Wilder places always present an environment that is both teacher and therapist. A rapid change in weather, unexpected barriers to progress, the need to reassess and change direction, to swallow our pride and accept we’re not where we thought we were and how good it feels when we find our path again. Wilder places make our connection and interdependency with the natural world more obvious and immediate.

It’s not only in the wilder places that we can develop this sensitivity that sees our place as fitting into the natural world rather than dominating it. We can take time to listen to what nature has to teach us closer to home, whether it’s our local park, the dappled light through a tree lined street, looking up and gazing at the clouds and seeing the flight of birds, hearing the dawn chorus or exploring the local countryside. However we do it, one thing is in common - whether we enter a woodland or stroll across a park, we enter an ecosystem that is an interdependent and complex web of relationships and energetic transfer, an ecosystem that we are not just observing but we are part of. Our presence matters, what we do matters, how we do it matters. We do not pass unseen, without impact, without communicating.  
 
 Many indigenous peoples retain a deep reverence for the natural world, seeking to work with and not against it, seeing the health and wellbeing of the natural world as inextricably tied into their own. They recognise that any ecosystem is always in the process of recovering from a state of past disturbance towards a state of equilibrium whether caused naturally or by human intervention and part of their role is to assist this process not frustrate it.   The same process of recovery towards equilibrium is also acknowledged as an intrinsic part of the human condition as it is in the whole of the natural world. This humility sees no one part as more important than another - the web of interdependency is felt as inclusive and not seen as a hierarchy. This wisdom is naturally protective to sustain balance and life.

What does it take to change our perspective? 

New perspectives come from experiencing the familiar in new ways. We’re used to thinking of our walks and hikes in nature in terms of our own health and wellbeing and the evidence shows that being immersed in nature brings many benefits – it supports our immunity, improves mood, enhances attention and cardiovascular health amongst others. In some sense we consume what nature has to offer for our own well-being. 

Is it just about consumption? What about the exchange between us and the environment, what are the energetic transfers and connections and why do they matter?

We each have a unique response to these questions conditioned by our current state of mind, our experiential and emotional history and our capacity to listen. Being in nature, alone and in silence leads us to relate to our environment in a different way. We tune more deeply into our outer and inner senses and gradually become more sensitive to this energetic exchange.  We discover the natural environment presents as a mirror for us to see more clearly  - we can witness how all of nature, including ourselves, is in the same process of recovery from past disturbance toward equilibrium. In this way the natural world can act as both teacher and therapist to guide us, both individually and globally.
This guidance has all shades of subtlety.

On an individual level, when we immerse in a natural landscape that’s in balance and deeply listen, we will sense both our own imbalance and a direction of change. If we follow this, valuing the energetic exchange in both directions, greater alignment comes and we begin to see our place in the web and what’s possible. Increasingly we realise there’s no separation between us and nature, nature’s wellbeing is our wellbeing, there’s the felt experience of an energetic merging. It’s as if we are the trees, the birds, the flowing water, the wind. All is an expression of the four elements we share in common.

On a global level our impact on the natural world reflects the degree our own disturbances have pulled us out of balance. When nature is impoverished, far from balance and the web is under severe strain, it’s a reflection our societal attitudes are out of alignment.  When nature thrives and the web is resilient and balanced then societies are as well.  Nature constantly tells us about the well-being of the web and as we are inextricably part of this, it also tells us about our own well-being as a human species.

So what does it mean to walk in nature? Where we find ourselves today, both individually and collectively, means the answer is never more important or urgent.
 
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And what of that night on the bare mountain? In the morning as I left, I turned back in thanks, only to find I was barely able to distinguish my benefactor, unremarkable as it was in its surroundings, special only in the relationship we’d had and the gratitude I’d felt: a landscape lesson in modesty, generosity and the transience of experience.  ​

From the ravages of war to damaged personal relationships and financial insecurity, each one of us will at some point face the challenge of change that inevitably comes  with human life. It is a fact, whatever our personal resources and situation, that all birth leads to aging and death, the ultimate cycle of change none of us will swerve. So a relevant question for all of us to reflect on is:
 
Do crises only bring difficulty or might they also bring us a clue to our wellbeing and happiness?
 
In times of crisis it’s natural to react with resistance, we don’t want it or like it. We often feel aggrieved at the way events have conspired against us. Circumstances change in a way we neither like nor anticipate and we feel out of control. Whatever the cause, it’s our reaction to whatever is happening that is both the source of the pain we feel and also the signpost to recovering our balance.
 
Our instinct rails against this idea, surely others are to blame for how we feel. Whilst behaviour and circumstances might be unfair, unjust or mistaken, the difficulty of our lived experience is personal to us and it is uniquely conditioned by the perspectives, beliefs and habitual thoughts we hold about ourselves and others. This personal lens through which we view events means we fail to have all the information we need to move towards something more wholesome.
 
How might we do this? Whatever has happened, however unfair, unjust or mistaken, our first step towards recovering balance is recognising:
 
“What we think and ponder upon becomes the inclination of our mind.” MN19  v11
 
If we repeatedly inhabit our stories of blame and criticism, we create defences in our mind that fuel our speech and action.
 
 “He abused me, he beat me, he defeated me, he robbed me”, in those who harbour such thoughts, hatred is not appeased.
 
“He abused me, he beat me, he defeated me, he robbed me”, in those who do not harbour such thoughts, hatred is appeased.
 
Hatred is never overcome by hatred in this world. Hatred is only overcome by love. This is an eternal law. Dhp v3-5
 
Learning how to take control of these tempting impulses is one of our greatest acts of kindness to ourselves and others in our life. It is how we reverse the flow and expansion of discontent and unwholesome experience.
Changing direction internally needs us to step out of the familiar stories we repeat, and learn how to redirect the energy that fuels them, but how to do this?
 
This radical proposition, seductive in its simplicity requires us to investigate beyond the familiarity of reaction that we have invested in so heavily. The difficulty we all face here is how to re-focus our attention and begin to reconcile within ourselves the resistance that’s fuelling our reaction and has such an adverse impact on our happiness and wellbeing.
 
Investigating what we do not yet understand within ourselves, at a deeper level than our surface thoughts and habitual dialogue can start with a simple exploration of:
 
“I forgive myself for not understanding.” From the teaching of Bhante Vimaralamsi
 
The approach we need is to let ourselves rest with the simplicity of these words repeating them and staying open to the experience that unfolds. It can take time and patience to learn to listen in this way, to move beyond verbal analysis and internal dialogue and directly meet the defended wounds inside with kindness and compassion.
 
When we find the courage to look within in this way, we move from being hostage to an outer resolution that might never be forthcoming, to a freedom from our inner resistance and defensive tension. This gives us the opportunity to discover how crises can reveal the path to lasting happiness.