檳榔嶼

- YOU ARE A PERSON WORTHY OF LOVE.
  - You don't have to do anything to prove that.
  - You don't have to earn love.
- A lack of real love for ourselves is one of the most constricting, painful conditions we can know. It cuts us off from our deepest potential for connecting and caring.
- We worry that we're not desirable enough, good enough, successful enough. We fear we're not enough, period.
- A lot of people seek out romance as a way of not loving themselves.
- Linda Carroll : "Loving yourself is holding yourself accountable to be the best you can be in your life Narcisistic love has nothing to do with accountability."
- We are born ready to love and be loved.
- The sin is being born the "wrong" gender, echnicity, race, or sexual orientation, all of which can lead to feelings of not belonging.
- Jerry Mander hypothesizes that media is deliberately designed to induce self-hatred, negative body image, and dejection, with advertising drummed up - and sold - to offer the cure.
- Feeling incomplete inside ourselves, we search for others to complete us.
- When we start to pay attention, we see that we're challenged daily to act lovingly on our own behalf. Simple gestures of respect - care of the body, rest for the mind, and beauty for the soul in the form of music and art or nature - are all ways of showing ourselves love.
- It's not that easy to radically alter our views about where happiness comes from, or what brings us joy.
- Real love allows for failure and suffering.
- The hardest part of this practice for me has been listening to, feeling, and grieving the intense pain of my childhood and teen years.
- Unlike our pop-cultural ideas of love as mushy, related to wanting, owning, and possessing, lovingkindness is open, free, unconditional, and abundant. Lovingkindness is the practice of offering to oneself and others wishes to be happy, peaceful, healthy, strong.
- Cultivating lovingkindness for ourselves is the foundation of real love for our friends and family, for new people we encounter in our daily lives, for all beings and for life itself.

INTRODUCTION PRACTICES
1. Begin by sitting comfortably. .. If you are newer to meditation, five or ten mintues would be my suggestion.
2. Repeat the phrases, like, "May I be happy" with enough space and enough silence so that it is a rhythm that's pleasing to you.
3. You don't need to manufacture or fabricate a special feeling.
4. This is different from affirmations that tell us we are getting better and better, or insist that we're perfect just as we are.
5. You may decide it is helpful to coordinate these phrases with the breath, or simply have your mind rest in the phrases.
6. When you find your attention has wandered, see if you can let go of the distraction gently, and return to the repetition of the phrases.
7. When you feel ready, you can open your eyes.

- "Through experiences of fear, rejection, and pain - the experiences that for most of us are part of a 'normal' childhood and adult life... I believe that for most of us, a great deal of the time, lov efeels painful, vulnerable, like a golden nugget we know is contained deep inside of us, but that we feel compelled to guard at all costs. And we're often doing this without even noticing it."