Living with Your Heart Wide Open: How Mindfulness and Compassion Can Free You from Unworthiness, Inadequacy, and Shame PDF
Preview Living with Your Heart Wide Open: How Mindfulness and Compassion Can Free You from Unworthiness, Inadequacy, and Shame
“A bold new book that shows how engaging with mindful awareness and compassion can allow us to step out from behind conditional and limiting self-driven narratives and into a more openhearted embrace of our lives.” —Z indel V. Segal, PhD, author of Te Mindful Way Trough Depression “How we focus our atention can transform our lives and rewire our brains toward a healthier, more compassionate way of being. Living with Your Heart Wide Open is a practical, step-by-step guide that teaches us how to cultivate our awareness so that we can develop more resilient minds and enjoy lives of inner clarity and kindness. Freedom from the prison of a life on automatic pilot rests within these powerful and poetic pages.” —D aniel J. Siegel, MD, author of Mindsight “Living with Your Heart Wide Open is both healing and awakening. By questioning and transforming the many false and negative ways we understand ourselves, we fnd the joy of liberation.” —J ack Kornfeld, PhD, author of Te Wise Heart, A Path with Heart, and Afer the Ecstasy, the Laundry “Te way you talk to yourself, including that murmur in the back of your head, continually shapes your outlook, your mood, and the cir- cuits in your brain. In a warm, down-to-earth, and wonderfully useful way, Living with Your Heart Wide Open shows you how to change that storyline for the beter for greater confdence and happiness, resilience in the face of stress, and peace of mind.” —R ick Hanson, PhD, author of Buddha’s Brain “A bedside book for the heart. A daily reading in healing for the part of us we have put aside for later. A leting-go of our forgetfulness of how very beautiful we essentially are. A turning toward oneself with loving-kindness.” —S tephen Levine, author of Healing into Life and Death, Who Dies?, and Meetings at the Edge “It has been said that the teacher who is indeed wise does not bid you to enter the house of his or her wisdom, but rather leads you to the thresh- old of your own. If you want to access your inner wisdom, this is a book you want by your side. If you want to live in accord with your higher power, if you want to be inspired by your experience of life, you should know that this is a book flled with reliable and authentic support.” —J ohn Robbins, author Te Food Revolution, Te New Good Life, and Diet For a New America iving with Your L Heart Wide pen O • how mindfulness & compassion can free you from unworthiness, inadequacy & shame Steve Flowers, MFT Bob Stahl, PhD New Harbinger Publications, Inc. Publisher’s Note This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is sold with the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering psychological, financial, legal, or other professional services. If expert assistance or counseling is needed, the services of a competent professional should be sought. Distributed in Canada by Raincoast Books William Staford excerpt from “You Reading Tis, Be Ready” from THE WAY IT IS: NEW AND SELECTED POEMS. Copyright © 1998 by the Estate of William Staford. Copyright © 2011 by Steve Flowers and Bob Stahl Reprinted with the permission of Graywolf Press, Minneapolis, Minnesota, www.gray- New Harbinger Publications, Inc. wolfpress.org. 5674 Shattuck Avenue Oakland, CA 94609 “No Measuring Up” from THE COMPLETE TASSAJAR COOKBOOK by Edward www.newharbinger.com Espe Brown, copyright © 2009. Published by arrangement with Shambhala Publications, Inc., Boston. www.Shambhala.com. Cover design by Amy Shoup Text design by Michele Waters-Kermes Excerpt from “Childhood Friends” by Rumi from THE ESSENTIAL RUMI, translated Acquired by Jess O’Brien by Coleman Barks. Copyright © 1995 by Coleman Barks, used with permission. Edited by Jasmine Star “Te Guest House” by Rumi from THE ILLUMINATED RUMI, translated by Coleman All Rights Reserved Barks. Copyright © 1997 by Coleman Barks, used with permission. “A pearl goes up for auction…” by Rumi from RUMI: THE BIG RED BOOK, translated by Coleman Barks. Copyright © 2010 by Coleman Barks, used with permission. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data on file “How did the rose ever open its heart…” from the Penguin publication THE GIFT, Flowers, Steve. POEMS BY HAFIZ, copyright © 1999 Daniel Ladinsky and used with his permission. Living with your heart wide open : how mindfulness and compassion can free you from unworthiness, loneliness, and shame / Steve Flowers and Bob Stahl ; foreword “Today, like every other day, we wake up empty…” by Rumi from THE ILLUMINATED by Tara Brach. RUMI, translated by Coleman Barks. Copyright © 1997 by Coleman Barks, used with p. cm. permission. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 978-1-57224-935-6 (pbk.) -- ISBN 978-1-57224-936-3 (pdf e-book) “Love has befriended Hafz so completely…” from the Penguin publication THE GIFT, 1. Attitude (Psychology) 2. Self-perception. 3. Self-confidence. I. Stahl, Bob. II. POEMS BY HAFIZ, copyright © 1999 Daniel Ladinsky and used with his permission. Title. BF327.F56 2011 “Escape”, from THE COMPLETE POEMS OF D. H. LAWRENCE by D. H. Lawrence, 158.1--dc22 edited by V. de Sola Pinto & F. W. Roberts, copyright © 1964, 1971 by Angelo Ravagli and 2011012534 C. M. Weekley, Executors of the Estate of Frieda Lawrence Ravagli. Used by permission of Viking Penguin, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. To all who choose to live with their hearts wide open even as they face fear and pain. ~ Contents Foreword vi Acknowledgments ix Introduction 1 1 Te Fiction of Me 7 2 Choosing How You Look at Tings 27 3 Creating a Mindfulness Practice 51 4 Looking Behind the Curtain of Self 69 5 Opening to Self-Compassion 89 6 Opening to Loving-Kindness 107 7 Becoming Real 129 8 Awakening to Wisdom and Compassion 151 Resources 169 References 175 ~ Foreword Te greatest truths are too ofen forgoten. Tis book calls us back to one that is central to our happiness: If we cannot embrace our own frightened and vulnerable hearts, we cannot love our world. Sadly, we are ofen at war with ourselves. More times than I can recount, people have shared with me the pain of their core beliefs. “Something is basically wrong with me,” they tell me. “I don’t feel worthy of love.” One woman captured her pain in a way that really struck me: “I am a disgrace,” she said with a mix of disgust and sorrow. Tat word, “disgrace”—out of the fow of grace—speaks to the soul sufering of feeling inadequate, ashamed, or isolated. When we have turned on ourselves in harsh judgment and dislike, we lose access to our own natural intelligence, and we are cut of from our innate tender- ness and openness. All that we long for—intimacy with others, peace of mind, feeling fully alive—is out of reach. Living with Your Heart Wide Open ofers a time-honored yet vibrant pathway for healing this core sufering of self-aversion. Steve Flowers and Bob Stahl are both dedicated, longtime practitioners of meditation and talented, wise mindfulness teachers. With great clarity and compas- sion, they introduce the principles and practices of mindfulness medita- tion in a way that is inviting and accessible. Teir stories show us that deep emotional healing is possible, and their exercises and meditations allow us to engage directly in inner transformation. For anyone who is commited to opening beyond the trance of unworthiness, this book
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