'Go to the Places That Scare You'

At the beginning of each dharma talk, after our meditation (so we are all primed to receive insight and wisdom,) I have been reading a page from The Pocket Pema Chodron, a diminutive and dear collection of the author’s teachings, usually one to three paragraphs long. This book was a present from one of my students and has become a lovely tradition for our class. We never know what it will offer, but it always feels like a gift.

This week was Teaching #85 ‘Go to the places that scare you.’ We don’t often discuss at any length what we have read, because the author is so succinct and spot on, what more needs to be said? But this time it felt like we could just hang out with that thought for awhile, so we talked about what it is to go to the places that scare us. Pema Chodron has a whole book on this topic, so it’s not surprising that we found we could spend time with the idea. It led to a very rich sharing with a number of personal insights by students. See what it brings up for you when you go to the interior places that scare you, the places you usually avoid.
In our discussion we were able to experiment with using the techniques we discussed last week: Sharing without getting involved in 'the story.' We could see how this way of sharing was very powerful and approachable. Together we could look at what was arising use skillful means to sit with it and allow it to transform.

What seemed to want to be shared after that was this dharma talk about noticing strong emotions: http://stefnoble.blogspot.com/2011/01/noticing-enzyme-action-for-emotion.html