I think the reason Buddhism and Western psychology are so compatible is that Western psychology helps to identify the stories and the patterns in our personal lives, but what Buddhist awareness training does is it actually allows the person to develop skills to stay in what's going on.

We are continually experiencing the conditioning to hold on, tighten, or resist.

If our hearts are ready for anything, we are touched by the beauty and poetry and mystery that fill our world.

Longing, felt fully, carries us to belonging.

No matter what feeling comes up - numbness, irritability, shame - if I let it arise and play itself through, I naturally open into wakefulness and care.

Somewhere in my early twenties I realized I was pretty constantly monitoring myself, judging how I was always falling short, whether it was about not being a good enough daughter or friend, or my appearance, or whatever. I ended up becoming involved with a spiritual path in the yogic tradition, living in an ashram, doing a very rigorous spiritual practice.

On this sacred path of Radical Acceptance, rather than striving for perfection, we discover how to love ourselves into wholeness.