Day Seventy-One ... A Quote to Ponder

This morning (it really does feel like Thursday today) I got up and had some time to look at Facebook and the posts my friends made today. I came across this one, a meditation quote by Pema Chodron shared by my friend in Andrea in NY:

‎'We habitually erect a barrier called blame that keeps us from communicating genuinely with others, and we fortify it with our concepts of who's right and who's wrong. We do that with the people who are closest to us and we do it with political systems, with all kinds of things that we don't like about our associates or our society. It is a very common, ancient, well-perfected device for trying to feel better. Blame others. Blaming is a way to protect your heart, trying to protect what is soft and open and tender in yourself. Rather than own that pain, we scramble to find some comfortable ground.' 

 It ties in a lot with what I am reading by Mike Robbins about the pervasive negativity in ourselves. It is easier to gossip about people and what we don't like about them to find something to appreciate. These really are just habits than can be changed with awareness and the desire to choose another way.

How often do we  attribute our mood or state of mind to someone else's actions? I'll be happy if only they would do something different, the way I think it should be done, etc... This once again reminds me of something my yoga teacher Lucia would ask before class ... "Would you rather be right? Or happy?"


I really do want to be happy. I do not need or want to be right, but sometimes my ego takes over and I have to remind it to let go of being right. Just let go and everything will work the way it should. I don't have all the answers, so how can I be so sure I'm right anyway? My sense of "right" is really my own unique opinion.


Another thing that Mike Robbins points out is in order to be right someone else has to be wrong. That certainly does not feel good and  at the same time does not show appreciation or gratitude.


Pondering,
Nicola Byrne


We tend to forget that happiness doesn't come as a result of getting something we don't have, but rather of recognizing and appreciating what we do have.
-Frederick Keonig