Self Compassion

Why Self Compassion?

There’s confusion about the need for self compassion. It seems it’s the place we go to as a last resort–after we’ve exhausted ourselves trying to figure out why we feel the way we do. In our habits of over analyzing everything we only deepen our confusion. It’s important to have compassion for that part of ourselves that keeps us in our heads! Self compassion is an expression of the heart and our heart is the seat of wisdom.

Return to Our True Nature

The north star that guides my work is that each of us at our core is whole, wise, compassionate, and clear. That includes even the most deluded person. These qualities are ever present and can be covered over by the wear and tear of this life, in short, we forget who we are, we forget our true nature. There is no one way to back to our hearts but the movement toward “returning to our true nature” rather than a “self improvement project” is an act of compassion in itself. In the self forgetting we develop strategies for getting through life and with time, these same strategies can become barriers to the contentment we seek.

This practice is a way of tending those barriers

What is it to tend to our inner critic, or an angry part of ourselves, or our disappointments while holding to what is whole and true and undamaged?

To “live close to the way we are made” as poet David Whyte puts it, requires knowing ourselves. It requires not putting ourselves out of our own hearts. When we make room for who we are we make room for others. If you’d like guided support here’s an audio (10 minutes 37 seconds).