Discovering the Gold: Remembering Our True Nature by Cultivating Mindfulness and Compassion
I remember when I was on a book tour for Radical Acceptance , one of the places I stopped was the Buddhist university, Naropa, and they had a big poster with a big picture of me and, underneath the photo, the caption was: Something is wrong with me. The Trance of Unworthiness: Forgetting Who We Are I wrote about the Trance of Unworthiness in Radical Acceptance 14 years ago, and I’ve found, over the years, that it is still pretty much the most pervasive expression of suffering that I encounter in myself and in those I’ve worked with. It comes out as fear or shame — a feeling of being fundamentally flawed, unacceptable, not enough. Who I am is not okay . A core teaching of the Buddha is that we suffer because we forget who we really are. We forget the essence — the awareness and the love that’s here — and we become caught in an identity that’s less than who we are. When we are in the trance of unworthiness , we’re not aware ...