CARING, COURAGE, AND COMPASSION

I belong to a Buddhist group. We honor the teachings of the Dali Lama.

Yesterday a long time friend and member of our group suddenly passed away.

Her name was Sherie and she was only in her early 60’s. A lovely woman with long beautiful hair. A sad time for us, and her family.

What this brought to mind for me, is the absolute fragility of our lives, and how death can occur for any of us, at any time.

As someone who values the creative process, the reminder of how little time we have to experience what we enjoy doing, and how we can share this with others.

So often we are hard on ourselves, and the inner critic shows up to thwart our creative voice.

This hard on ourselves is the inner critic.

When we stop and give in, to-this-hard-on-ourselves voice, we are not being courageous and are letting the egoistic negative self-talk take over. This does not serve us well.

However, when we practice and listen to our caring voice, we become courageous, and caring towards ourselves. The hard-on-ourselves-voice is quietied.

We really do have so little time on this earth plane.

Having self-compassion, and compassion towards others opens the space to be creative beings.

When we take a stand courageously against our own inner critic and negative self talk, and just say, “so what I’ll do it anyway” we embrace a sense of clarity, self-compassion, and caring.

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