Healthy Relationships Support Group
No relationship is perfect. A long-term relationship requires constant effort to understand each other, fix misunderstandings, solve problems and continue to grow as both individuals change and evolve. How we deal with our misunderstandings is the focus of this community. Join us to find support, get advice, and share your experience with your relationship.
HEAVEN AND HELL by Pema Chodron
"Theres another story that you may have read that has to do with what we call heaven and hell, life and death, good and bad. Its a story about how those things dont really exist except as a creation of our own minds. It goes like this: A big burly samurai comes to the wise man and says, Tell me the nature of heaven and hell. And the roshi looks him in the face and says: Why should I tell a scruffy, disgusting, miserable slob like you? The samurai starts to get purple in the face, his hair starts to stand up, but the roshi wont stop, he keeps saying, A miserable worm like you, do you think I should tell you anything? Consumed by rage, the samurai draws his sword, and hes just about to cut off the head of the roshi. Then the roshi says, Thats hell. The samurai, who is in fact a sensitive person, instantly gets it, that he just created his own hell; he was deep in hell. It was black and hot, filled with hatred, self-protection, anger, and resentment, so much so that he was going to kill this man. Tears fill his eyes and he starts to cry and he puts his palms together and the roshi says, Thats heaven.
(From her book Awakening Loving Kindness)
"Theres another story that you may have read that has to do with what we call heaven and hell, life and death, good and bad. Its a story about how those things dont really exist except as a creation of our own minds. It goes like this: A big burly samurai comes to the wise man and says, Tell me the nature of heaven and hell. And the roshi looks him in the face and says: Why should I tell a scruffy, disgusting, miserable slob like you? The samurai starts to get purple in the face, his hair starts to stand up, but the roshi wont stop, he keeps saying, A miserable worm like you, do you think I should tell you anything? Consumed by rage, the samurai draws his sword, and hes just about to cut off the head of the roshi. Then the roshi says, Thats hell. The samurai, who is in fact a sensitive person, instantly gets it, that he just created his own hell; he was deep in hell. It was black and hot, filled with hatred, self-protection, anger, and resentment, so much so that he was going to kill this man. Tears fill his eyes and he starts to cry and he puts his palms together and the roshi says, Thats heaven.
(From her book Awakening Loving Kindness)
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check out that smoke ring. It tasted really good. I smothered it with Maulls BBQ sauce which is Local to St. Louis and one of the best I ever had.....
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I was recently separated from my wife of 33 years and it's complicated. Anyway I rented a room about 15 minutes away and I see my kids about once a week. I see the people who own the house I live in once in a while but other than that I stay in my room where I do my cooking, wash dishes in the shower, read, color, and sleep. I get out at least once a day. I grocery shop and I attend 2 meetings...
"Every man creates for himself the world in which he must live."
Perception is very subjective and in no small part a product of a lifetime of conditioning, and more often than not our reactions aren't a choice, but also arise from a lifetime of conditioning. Quite often we have a preprogrammed reaction to a flawed perception.
Oftentimes we look to add to our life in order to elevate its quality, but I believe a better approach is digging down into all the conditioning and subtracting that which does not serve an elevated quality of life.
"Maybe the journey isn't so much about becoming anything. Maybe it's about unbecoming everything that isn't really you so you can be who you were meant to be in the first place. "