Making Friends with Ourselves

Relating to ourselves with honesty and kindness

“While acknowledging that we have delusions, we should not identify with them, thinking, ‘I am a selfish, worthless person’ or ‘I am an angry person.’ Instead we should identify with our pure potential and develop the wisdom and courage to overcome our delusions.”

– Geshe Kelsang Gyatso, How to Transform Your Life

We all have an inner critic. This small voice can be really helpful in gently reminding us to avoid habits or actions which take us into a negative space. However, if the critic gets too negative, too loud and too insistent, we can find ourselves slipping into a black hole of negative self-talk and guilt which can be limiting at best, and paralyzing if it really takes a hold.

Negative self-talk brings us down, makes us anxious, needy, and probably irritating. It is an exceptionally effective barrier in stopping us from seeing opportunities and realizing our potential. Buddha suggests that rather than identifying with our faults and limitations, we should recognise that at the very core our being we have an unlimited potential for love, kindness and wisdom.

This workshop helps us connect with this beautiful, pure, potential and begin to shrug off the fixed and limited views of our self that are holding us back from becoming the best we can be.

WHAT TO EXPECT

These classes are based on Buddha’s teachings on the mind, but you do not need to be a Buddhist to attend, or to benefit from them. There is no physical exercise involved and you can choose to sit either in a chair or on a cushion. These classes are suitable for all levels of experience.