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You're Already Enough

Every week I send out a love note filled with resources, musings, and inspiration about walking this path of yoga and liberation. Click here to subscribe!

 

This time of year the air feels full of relentless messages about self-improvement, diet schemes, exercise routines, etc. New Year, new you. You know the drill. These messages are especially pernicious for those who fall outside the normative paradigm in some visible way: people of color, non-normatively-gendered folks, people in larger bodies, etc, all receive these messages more often and at higher volume, but they’re constantly being thrown at all of us regardless. The machine of capitalism runs on tricking us into thinking we’ve never got enough, can never be enough.

This can also be an empowering time of year, a time when we make plans and goals and promises to shift old habits, to make changes that this time, we’re sure, will stick. While there’s nothing wrong with working to improve ourselves, if we’re not careful, our work to make ourselves better can quickly become just another way to judge and criticize.

Trying to make yourself better can actually make you feel worse.

We need to approach this work within a context of our inherent wholeness, no easy task in a culture bent on making us feel small and unworthy. So I want to tell you, in case you need to be reminded:

You are already whole and complete. You are already divine. Nothing needs to be added or subtracted. No amount of pounds shed or muscles gained, no bad habit dropped or good one acquired can change the immutable fact that you are already enough, exactly as you are right now.

I’m not implying that you need to quit with the self-improvement routines. You can still keep working on yourself, but try doing so from a place of love and acceptance instead of loathing and rejection. Can you frame your inner work as self-exploration rather than self-flagellation? Can you approach it with curiosity rather than punishment? This is the work of decolonizing the mind from a lifetime of poison.

Can you approach your work with questions rather than judgments? Try these:

How else might I unfold? What might my body enjoy today? What haven’t I discovered about myself yet? How else might I keep growing?

It’s important and it’s often neglected and countered, so I’ll say it again: You are already whole and complete.

You are already enough, exactly as you are right now.

Much love, 

Bear

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Intelligence OR Obedience? Inquiry as a Tool Against Dogma

Every week I send out a love note filled with resources, musings, and inspiration about walking this path of yoga and liberation. Click here to subscribe

How do we build intelligence instead of obedience? Can we engage in inquiry instead of dogma? Dogma is “a principle or set of principles laid down by an authority as incontrovertibly true.” We often think of religions as being dogmatic. They give us broad ideas that assert how life is, how God is, how we are or should be, and generally how the world works, in addition to smaller rules about the minutiae of daily life: how we dress, what to wear, how to pray.

Beliefs in and of themselves aren’t necessarily dogma, but when we leave them unexamined, when we take them as fact, when we don’t question the authority from which they are derived, they can quickly become dogmatic. In many ways, our culture rewards obedience and punishes questioning. There are true consequences for deviating too far from any norm and questioning the norms themselves can be equally dangerous. Conformity is the rule of the day.

Yoga has its own dogma. For years I taught certain poses in a particular way without much thought. I did this because it was how I had been taught to do the pose, or how I’d had the alignment explained to me in training, or sometimes because I hadn’t taken the time to give it a whole lot more thought.

Warrior One, for instance, I always taught with the weight in the pinky toe side of the back foot. Recently a visiting teacher encouraged us to put the weight in the big toe side of the foot in a workshop she was teaching. Admittedly my first reaction was to think: She must be mistaken.

But she repeated the errant instruction, so I did as she asked, and lo and behold, nothing terrible happened! And in fact I found myself able to access the elusive action of squaring the hips a bit more than when I’m putting the weight on the back edge of the foot.

Part of how we build intelligence instead of obedience is by engaging in a practice of inquiry. In asana practice, we can ask one powerful question: What is the intended effect of this instruction? Ie why is the person in authority asking me to do this in this particular way? And then: is it giving me the intended effect? And finally: is the intended effect something that’s actually useful to me?

Going back to Warrior One, when we press into the pinky toe side, the arch of the foot lifts, as does the inner ankle, shin and thigh. The back leg which sometimes gets sleepy in the pose suddenly wakes up and participates fully in the pose. When we press into the big toe side, the hips square more easily, the ribcage rotates more, and any torque on the back knee may be relieved. If the intention of the instructor is to really work the squaring of the hips, which instruction might they give? And for a student who has flat feet, which action might be more beneficial?

Rather than accepting the word of our teachers as the gospel truth, let’s build intelligence based on a practice of inquiry. Critical thinking is a skill we can practice on the mat but can also lobby out in the world. This is a tool for living under oppression. In a political climate where opinion columns masquerade as journalism and the highest leader in the land desperately needs a fact checker, let’s bolster our intelligence instead of our obedience.

Much love, 

Bear

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How To Talk To Your Conservative Parents About Politics

Every week I send out a love note filled with resources, musings, and inspiration about walking this path of yoga and liberation. Click here to subscribe!

The first time I butted heads with my family over politics was over 9/11. I was a senior in high school. Someone made a xenophobic comment and I pushed back with all my teenage rage. I just couldn’t understand how they thought that way. It wasn’t pretty.

I’ve yelled at my parents (or other family members) over the Iraq War, gay rights, Hurricane Katrina, and Trayvon Martin. In these battles, whoever yells the loudest wins, and whoever cries first loses. I always lost.

I’m from the Deep South where conservatism (and racism/misogyny/homophobia masquerading as political belief) is the (white) norm, and Trump signs vastly outnumber all others on the manicured lawns in subdivisions and the unkempt ones in trailer parks like the one where I was born. My family is deeply conservative. I am, at my heart, a radical.

What I’ve come to realize is that our beliefs are the summary of our life experiences. Who we are and what we’ve done results in what we believe. So how is it that I ended up so politically different from my family? I think it’s the cumulative effect of several factors.

  • Artistry. I’ve been an artist since childhood, a lone creator in a family of rationalists. This always set me apart, at least in my own viewpoint. Seeing myself as different than opened up space for me to connect to others across difference.

  • Travel. My sixth grade social studies teacher took fifty middle school students around the country each year for a few hundred dollars. At age 11, I had travelled only to Pensacola and Houston, and in the three years that followed I visited seven new states. God bless Mrs. Jacques.

  • Education. I was the first person in my extended family to finish college. I went to boarding school in high school. Being surrounded by likeminded people and supported by teachers with graduate degrees was deeply transformational.

Altering your perspective via art or education or travel or friendship or whatever else opens up your world view. When we only ever see things from one perspective all the time, when we are only ever seeing our own point of view, we get stuck in that position. Anything else feels, well, terrifying. The unknown is foreign and to be rejected. This is how bias happens. This is how a deeply xenophobic president gets elected. This is also how the “blue feed” happens on Facebook. Shortly after the election I talked to a friend who told me she knew not a single person who voted for Trump. We radicals often live in just as much of a bubble as our conservative foes.

I take a different approach with my family now. When I engage them on difficult political issues, I take these four steps to keep the conversation honest, healthy and productive.

  1. COMPASSION. Start and end with compassion. For both of us. We are both whole human beings, nothing less.

  2. CONTEXT. Remember the context for their beliefs. Their opinions aren’t because they’re stupid; they’re because of their particular set of life experiences.  

  3. LISTENING. Practice deep, real, actual listening. If you’re simply waiting to make your next point, you’re not really listening.

  4. PATIENCE. Take the long view. You will not change anyone’s mind in one conversation, but slowly, over time, you can help someone open up to a perspective that’s different than their own.

Using these techniques, I have managed to explain successfully to a family member how the thing they just said was a little racist, or what genderqueer means, or why political correctness isn’t about one person’s oversensitivity. We’ve talked about the history of redlining, how being poor doesn’t cancel out white privilege, and many other sensitive topics that would’ve once seemed impossible to discuss.

Don’t misunderstand me, I still get angry sometimes, and I have definitely had to walk away from a discussion that got too heated. Being able to converse about their ideas doesn’t mean that I condone their beliefs. I also would never suggest that anyone should to continue to be in relationship with people whose political beliefs ascribe your destruction.

But if your family (or co-workers or friends or whatever) is conservative, and if you have some relative degree of privilege or power, it might be useful to the movement to learn how to talk to them about politics. Though it might ultimately make you feel a little better, it's not for simply for our own emotional well being or spiritual piousness that we should try to see the other side. The truth is, these tactics are strategic. Yelling at my parents never works. But listening deeply, being compassionate, and continually engaging in these difficult conversations sometimes actually makes a difference.

When yelling was my strategy, I would always lose.  But I believe that we will win.

Much love,

Bear

 

P.S. White New Orleanians seeking in-person support around these issues might be interested in the European Dissent Discussion Group meeting this weekend. “The next discussion meeting will be at the Rosa F. Keller Library at 4300 S Broad, in the sunroom, on Saturday, December 10th from 2-4 pm. We will work on developing our skills in responding to racism through conversation in our daily lives. We'll share the perspectives and arguments we encounter most often for why racism doesn't exist or isn't a real problem, and share ideas for effective responses.” Contact Keely Byrne for more information. keely.byrne@gmail.com

 

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Discomfort Vs. Danger: Yoga, Discernment and White Fragility

Every week I send out a love note filled with resources, musings, and inspiration about walking this path of yoga and liberation. Click here to subscribe!

How can you tell the difference between discomfort and danger?

I’m pretty limited in my shoulder mobility, and for years in my practice certain poses would cause me some degree of discomfort. I would mention this to my teachers and they would tell me: Don’t practice those poses anymore.

It wasn’t until a few years ago that I found a teacher who said, “Where exactly does it hurt? And how exactly would you describe your pain?” And then she’d say, “Here, try it this way. Better? No? How about this? Okay, ah yes, good. Practice it this way.” And when I occasionally resisted she would say, “I know that this is uncomfortable, but it is safe. Please try it anyway.”

This was a revelation in my practice.

Often the worst thing about discomfort is the factor of being unknown. I think about the Iyengar version of Supported Matsyasana (a chest opener over tall blocks). The first time I did this pose, my shoulders, chest and thoracic spine were so tight that it was painful to be in the shape. Having never done this pose before, I freaked out. My mind raced, my breathing got shallow, and I chose to come out of the pose. The sensation was intense and unknown, and I felt endangered.

It’s been a few years since my first Matsyasana, and since then I have learned to be more skillful in my practice, figuring out what is dangerous pain that should be avoided (sharp, sudden, acute, nervy pain in the smaller joints) and what is simply discomfort and can be tolerated to some greater good (broad, gradual, diffuse, muscular pain in the bigger joints or muscles).

Over time, my body and my mind opened to this pose, and now it’s one of my beloved go-tos for reversing the spinal slump of long days of computer work. The discomfort is still there, but now I can see it for what it is, and recognize that the greater danger is actually in avoiding the pose, lest I end up stuck in the spinal slump perpetually.

Which brings us to white fragility. This concept, coined by scholar Robin DeAngelo, states that white people are protected from and therefore averse to racial discomfort. Because our whole culture is predicated on protecting the needs and interests of white people, we experience few instances of true race-based risk, and thus, our scale is skewed for what should ring the alarm bells and what is simply awkwardness or intensity.

Many people of color experience true danger on a daily basis from racial profiling, police harassment, and daily discrimination. Black lives are on the line regularly in a way that is hard to fathom as a white person, and yet we as white folks tend to perceive our own racial discomfort as danger, even when it’s not.

My challenge for us (white folks and other people of privilege) is to begin to put to use the discernment skills we’ve learned in our yoga practice. When engaging in social justice work, can you start to assess what is truly dangerous versus what is simply discomfort?

It’s important to remember that what is simply uncomfortable to one person may be truly dangerous to another, so it’s best to keep our judgments to a minimum. Just as you’re the only one in your body in a yoga pose, you’re also the only one living your life, so you’re the only one who can know for sure.

For example, talking to say, your conservative parents about how their support for Trump is actually kinda racist is in the zone of discomfort. It might feel like an intense, sometimes intolerable discomfort, but it is probably not actually dangerous. Now if you were a teenager and fighting with your parents about politics put you in a position where you might be kicked out of the house, that’s danger, a real risk.

Calling out a co-worker who makes a racist joke: discomfort, not danger. (Again, if calling out, say, the president of your company made it likely that you would lose your job, you would need to do some more assessing to determine if that was the right course of action. Maybe, maybe not.)

For me, using the platform I have as a yoga teacher to talk about race feels scary sometimes. I get really uncomfortable trying to lead a conversation about a difficult topic with a mixed group of friends and strangers in a yoga studio. I often mess up and say things ineloquently. It gets messy! Yet, I know it’s not actually harmful to my well-being to do so, and so I keep trying.

Over time we can build up a level of tolerance for the awkwardness. Eventually the heart pounding, the stomach in the throat sensations might start to subside. What seems dangerous to you now may one day be tolerated as simple discomfort.

Discern the difference. Build up a tolerance. Keep finding your edge. Don’t push beyond it. Just stay there. Breathe in. Breathe out. Watch the edge move. Take a risk. Take another one. Don’t get self-satisfied. Wake up every day and ask, now what? What else? What more? Keep taking risks until they don’t seem so risky any more. Trade in the hypervigilant sense of danger for a tolerance of reasonable discomfort. Get uncomfortable. Do so skillfully.

Love and justice,

Bear

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Plan to Persist: Commitment, Accountability and Justice

Every week I send out a love note filled with resources, musings, and inspiration about walking this path of yoga and liberation. Click here to subscribe!

These past few weeks since the election have brought up a groundswell of intense emotion that is valid and valuable, provided we can use it well. The world is difficult and seems likely to get more challenging, but I believe we are rising to the task. I’ve been pondering this week: how can we plan to persist? How can we make sure we take all this anger, fury and rage and channel it skillfully and sustainably?

When I first started practicing yoga, I came to class and thought, “Wow! That was amazing! I can see how this would be a really useful thing for me to keep doing.” And then, life happened, and I didn’t come back to class for a long while. This cycle repeated itself many times over my first couple of years of practice. What changed so that I ended up here, 11 years later as a yoga teacher?

Eventually I met a teacher who I really admired. I resonated deeply with the way she taught. I wanted to show up for her. I needed some kind of external accountability to make sure that I got my butt to the studio every week, and having a teacher did that for me.

My need for external accountability is not unique. Many of us struggle to put our energy towards causes we care about in a sustained and concrete way without some kind of external obligation.

Social researcher Gretchen Rubin describes a woman who bemoans the fact that was once a star runner on the track team, but now can barely muster the motivation to lace on her running shoes. What’s the difference? When she had to show up for her coach and her team, she was able to, but when the only obligation is to herself, she struggles.

If this feels familiar to you, don’t beat yourself up about it. See this tendency for what it is and then find ways to work to succeed within it. This week in class we discussed ways that each of us are committing to show up for social justice in our lives and our communities. Joining an organization, volunteering to make calls or knock doors, raising money, doing childcare, cooking meals; all of these can be useful ways to contribute.

What will you commit to? How will you make sure you’re held accountable?  What are the systems we need to put in place personally and communally, in order to take action now and keep taking action in the long term? How can we plan to persist?

Much love, 

Bear

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Revolutionary Vulnerability

Every week I send out a love note filled with resources, musings, and inspiration about walking the path of yoga and liberation. Click here to subscribe!

Today I turn 33.

On this day seven years ago, I woke before dawn in a tent on the beach. I was in Mexico, and it was the third day of my first yoga teacher training. For the following weeks, I had the same schedule each day: wake at 4:30am, walk down to the ocean, dig a hole in the sand to sit in, meditate for 45 minutes. Walk to the pavillion, practice for an hour and a half, eat breakfast. Do more yoga. Eat lunch. Practice teaching. More yoga. Meditate. Dinner. Singing and sharing. Sleep.

I came home a month later transformed. My skin was tan, my ass was kicked and my heart was split open. My days in Mexico had been filled with learning about yoga, teaching yoga, and practicing yoga. But truly, my days were filled with learning about and practicing being myself.

I’ve been teaching now for seven years, and showing up fully as my whole self is at the essence of my practice. Being present, being vulnerable, and being myself, in all its messiness and complexity: this is the gift I offer to the world. This is the gift each of us can give.

All this woo talk isn’t a replacement for on the ground WORK to undo harm and move towards justice. I believe that in the face of oppression and fear, showing up fully brings hope. In a world that teeters on the precipice of despair, being fully and divinely you can shift the balance. In a culture of shame, vulnerability is a revolution.

I deeply love and appreciate you. Thank you for being with me for these past seven years. You inspire me and prod me on towards deeper depths and greater heights. It is such an honor to strive to co-create a better world inside the four walls of the studio with you. May we continue together on this path!

Much love,

Bear

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This Is What We've Been Practicing For

Despite much cultural evidence to the contrary, we don’t practice yoga so that we can be good at headstands. Yoga wasn’t created so that you could learn to put your foot behind your head or to have a six-pack or work on your yoga booty. (What even is that?)

Yoga is training for real life. We call it yoga practice because we are practicing for what will happen when we step off the mat. The mat is the rehearsal room for real life. How we respond on the mat is how we’ll respond out in the world.

This last week has been intense for those of us who are working towards justice in the world. That our country fosters racism and misogyny, et. al. shouldn’t surprise you, but that blatant racism and misogyny have been enshrined in the highest office of government really hit me below the belt, and has, at times, completely overwhelmed me.

But this is what we’ve been practicing for.

All the uncomfortable positions you’ve put yourself into and learned to sustain were practice for this. All the poses you’ve held for minutes longer than you thought you could were for this moment.  Every time you have wanted to quit but haven’t. Every moment when your mind wandered but you brought it back to the breath. Every time you spoke to yourself with compassion.

All of it was for this moment.

Because you’ve been practicing, you know what to do. Because of your practice, it gets easier to stay present, to breathe, to remain calm and centered despite the emotional and political apocalyptic shit storm that’s been moving across the landscape.

When it feels like all hell has broken loose outside, you have the skills to find calm from the inside. This is what you’ve been practicing for.

When your mind is spinning 1000 miles an hour, you are able to slow it down. This is what you’ve been practicing for.

When anger and panic rises up overwhelmingly, you know how to find your center. This is what you’ve been practicing for.

When fear squeezes your chest like a vise, your can breathe to loosen its grip. This is what you’ve been practicing for.

We practice to reduce our suffering and to reduce the suffering of others. This work is nothing new. You’ve done this before. You know how already. All the rehearsing gets you ready for this moment, and the moment has arrived.

You can handle what you think you can't. You can stay present just a moment longer. You can breathe one breath, and then another, and another. 

This is what we've been practicing for. 

Much love,

Bear

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A Blessing For Grace In Times Of Chaos

:::The brand of blatant white supremacist misogyny that has risen to power is deplorable, but it is not new. These systems have worked to keep people down for centuries. I am grieving, but I am not surprised. I spent Wednesday cycling through the stages of grief: disbelief, denial, bargaining, guilt, anger, depression, and hope. I ate blueberry pancakes, laid on the floor and cried over Hillary’s utterly graceful concession speech. I biked across town to sit under 800 year old oak trees. I visited friends to commiserate, rage, and ultimately, strategize. And then I wrote this blessing:::

A Blessing for Grace in Times of Chaos

For those who are grieving, may you make space for your feelings. May you cry, rage and despair until your heart is wrung out. May you be fully present without clinging to the stories your feelings might try to tell you. Know that the feelings, like everything, will change.

May you know that there is power in emotion, and channel it towards action. Know that though your feelings have passed, they may still return. May you support your community in the ways you know how and allow yourself likewise to be supported.

For those who rejoiced on Tuesday, may you too be healed. May you find safety enough to breathe. May you look inside yourself and recognize your own humanity, inherently connected to all those around you but so long subsumed in the abyss of our toxic culture. 

May we all see, and continue to build, a world without separation, in which there is no more ‘us’ and ‘them’. May we deeply know that there is only one of us.

Let us then get to work. May we show up for immigrants, for Black people, for indigenous folks, for women, for queer and trans people. Let us get down in the dirt and do the work. Give your time, your skills, your money if you’ve got it, and your heart.

May we all take risks and find ways to take concrete, measurable actions. May we build bridges and ladders. May we never stop looking back, throwing the ropes that just saved us to the ones still drowning.

May we do the work that so many before us have done. May we follow their path. May we trust that "the arc of the moral universe bends towards justice." May we keep bending it thusly.

Much love, 

Bear

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Stability Among The Chaos

This post and discussion came about in the week before the election, before the results started rolling in, before we knew, but it’s as relevant now as ever.

This week is crazy, full of anxiety. There’s a lot looming on the horizon, much of which we can’t control. We can cast our single solitary vote (and I hope you will!), but we can’t control the results of Tuesday’s election. It feels like so much is at stake, and truly, the only thing we have any say in is our own reactions.

Thankfully yoga gives us tools to find groundedness among the chaos. Being “grounded” is kind of a woo-woo buzzword, but what I mean here is simple: stability. The ability to remain present despite the chaos rattling around us.

Yoga is one tool for finding that presence. In class this week we shared with each other more strategies for finding stability in the swirl.

  • Be in nature. Find a tree to sit beneath. Lay in the grass next to a body of water. Work in the garden. Look at the vast expanse of sky.

  • Cook a meal. Smell the onions browning in the pan. Feel the texture of crusty bread. Taste the sweetness of butternut squash.

  • Take a hot bath. Add salt to the water, maybe some fragrant herbs or essential oils if you have them. Light a candle. Listen to the sound of Tibetan singing bowls.

  • Go for a walk or run or bike ride. Move your body through space. Go at a pace that feels nourishing rather than punishing. Notice the wind on your face. Notice your breath in your chest.

  • Do something creative. Paint with watercolors. Color in a coloring book. Make a collage out of old magazines.  Don't judge the result. 

  • Sing or play music. Sing any song you know. When you’re singing, you’re breathing. If you play an instrument, pick it up. Dust it off. Play a tune.

  • Spend time with children or pets. Absorb some of their magic. (Not that kids are the same as kittens, but they do sometimes have a similar energy!)

We have many tools to find that sense of groundedness. Use the ones that work for you. I’d love to hear from you! What other strategies do you have for finding peace in times of anxiety?

Much love, 

Bear

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Real But Not True

Have you ever witnessed a small child get really truly freaked out by someone else’s Halloween costume? Dad’s wearing a mask or Grandma has her face painted, and the kid is spooked. The kid doesn’t yet have the ability to see the difference between the illusion the adult has created and what the reality actually is.

We’re no longer toddlers, but this happens to us all the time, our seeing a thing as something other than what it is. This is sometimes called “The Great Mistake”, and it often occurs in ways we don’t recognize. We believe our thoughts frequently and blindly, even when there is evidence to the contrary, and because of this, we suffer. We experience things in a way that is real but not true.

Imagine this: It’s dusk, and you’ve walked into your yard to throw the compost into the bin, when suddenly, you see a slithering creature in the grass. You freeze, your heart pounds, and your palms get sweaty. You lean in just a smidge to get a closer look at the snake when you realized, Doh! It’s just the garden hose.

Real but not true: The experience you had of seeing the snake in the grass is real; your sweaty palms and racing pulse actually happened. But it’s not true that there was a snake in the grass. Though your experience of it was real, there was never a snake in the grass.

Everything is not always as it seems.

For another example: You sit at the coffee shop waiting for your friend to arrive. The appointed time arrives and passes, and the friend never materializes. First you feel angry that your friend disrespected you in this way. How could they be so careless with your time? That line of thinking spirals down to all the other times when people in your world have let you down. Before you know it, you’ve spent most of the afternoon feeling shitty and unloveable. Hours later you look at your calendar to realize your coffee date is actually tomorrow.

Your experience of your friend standing you up is real. You felt anger and rejection and sorrow. But your friend didn’t stand you up.

It’s real but not true.

In the same way, yoga teaches us not to mistake our thoughts for reality. We mistake the masked monster for our father, the illusion for reality, and this makes us suffer. Even though the thoughts are convincing, you don’t have to believe them!

Yoga gives us tools to stay present in the moment, so we’re not constantly swayed by the ever persuasive thoughts. Following the breath, focusing on our posture, sitting in meditation, we start to see things clearly. Instead of being caught up in the real but not true, we begin to experience more fully that which is both real and true.

Much love,

Bear

P.S. I first learned about this concept from the teachings of Tara Brach. More here.

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