OUR DIFFICULTIES

Lumen

IN THIS PODCAST I TALK ABOUT:

– Our difficulties are our best teachers, but only if we know how to learn from them.

– Wounding in Childhood, being disliked

– Conscious engagement with our pain

– The heart and the mind

– How to use experience as fodder for the work

– Taking the lessons from our practice out into life

– Resistance, preferences, acceptance, allowance, process & the pillars of practice

– Enduring the long journey

– Opening up to our true nature

NOTE: Near the end of the podcast I talk about two students who are confronting resistance to difficulty. When I listen to myself, I heard irritation in my voice and I took the podcast down, worried they would hear that instead of the passion I have for the pivot point they are in. I took the podcast down to edit it and make it right but through great urging, from those who had a chance to listen, to put it back up, un-edited and raw, I am re-posting it without any edits. I want everyone who listens to know that the moment these two students are in is the moment I live for. It's the pivot point. The tone in my voice is about that passion, it's what gives meaning to my teaching. If you hear irritation or rushing in my voice, it's my own irritation and rushing with myself within this exact moment that I am connecting to, it's the work I have yet to do for myself. Their lesson is my own. I cherish these two as students, friends and fellow travelers who share a commitment and fire for self study that matches my own!

I am re-posting it, unedited and raw, largely because my acupuncturist urged me to put it out there saying that it's my job, as a teacher, to be slightly irritating, that it can bring value, movement, and growth in places of stagnation, if students choose to take it that way.