Most of us have spent our lives caught up in plans, expectations, ambitions for the future; in regrets, guilt or shame about the past. To come into the present is to stop the war.
We each have been betrayed. Let yourself picture and remember the many ways this is true. Feel the sorrow you have carried from this past. Now sense that you can release this burden of pain by gradually extending forgiveness as your heart is ready.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote emphasizes the importance of recognizing past betrayals and the healing power of forgiveness.
In this quote, Jack Kornfield encourages individuals to confront the pain caused by betrayal in their lives. He suggests that acknowledging the sorrow from past experiences is essential for healing, and that through the process of forgiveness, one can gradually release the emotional burdens they carry. This act of extending forgiveness is portrayed as a path to emotional freedom and personal growth, highlighting that healing takes time and is contingent on the readiness of the heart.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
During a therapy session discussing the impact of betrayal on mental health.
More from Jack Kornfield
All quotes →We need courage and strength, a kind of warrior spirit. But the place for this warrior strength is in the heart. We need energy, commitment, and courage not to run from our life nor to cover it over with any philosophy-mate rial or spiritual. We need a warrior’s heart that lets us face our lives directly, our pains and limitations, our joys and possibilities.
The questions asked at the end of lie are very simple ones: Did I love well? Did I love the people around me, my community, the earth, in a deep way? And perhaps, Did I live fully? Did I offer myself to life?
We can bring our spiritual practice into the streets, into our communities, when we see each realm as a temple, as a place to discover that which is sacred.
According to Buddhist scriptures, compassion is the "quivering of the pure heart" when we have allowed ourselves to be touched by the pain of life.
Much of spiritual life is self-acceptance, maybe all of it.
Similar quotes
But I want her to grow up knowing that I was the first man ever to fall in love with her. I'd always thought the father/daughter thing was overstated. But I can tell you, sometimes, she looks at me and I just become a puddle.
She said, why don't we both just sleep on it tonight,_x000D_ And I believe, in the morning you'll begin to see the light._x000D_ And then she kissed me and I realized she probably was right,_x000D_ There must be fifty ways to leave your lover, fifty ways to leave your lover.
Human relationships are rich and they're messy and they're demanding. And we clean them up with technology. Texting, email, posting, all of these things let us present the self as we want to be. We get to edit, and that means we get to delete, and that means we get to retouch, the face, the voice, the flesh, the body -- not too little, not too much, just right.
What we need to do is learn to respect and embrace our differences until our differences don't make a difference in how we are treated.
A choice which confronts every one of us at every moment is this: Shall we permit our fellow men to know us as we now are, or shall we seek instead to remain an enigma, an uncertain quantity , wishing to be seen as something we are not?
We wanted to test each other's capacity for survival: only if we had tried in vain to destroy one another would we know we were safe.