True Refuge: Finding Peace and Freedom in Your Own Awakened Heart

Each time you meet an old emotional pattern with presence, your awakening to truth can deepen. There’s less identification with the self in the story and more ability to rest in the awareness that is witnessing what’s happening. You become more able to abide in compassion, to remember and trust your true home. Rather than cycling repetitively through old conditioning, you are actually spiraling toward freedom.

The intimacy that arises in listening and speaking truth is only possible if we can open to the vulnerability of our own hearts. Breathing in, contacting the life that is right here, is our first step. Once we have held ourselves with kindness, we can touch others in a vital and healing way.

The great gift of a spiritual path is coming to trust that you can find a way to true refuge. You realize that you can start right where you are, in the midst of your life, and find peace in any circumstance. Even at those moments when the ground shakes terribly beneath you—when there’s a loss that will alter your life forever—you can still trust that you will find your way home. This is possible because you’ve touched the timeless love and awareness that are intrinsic to who you are.

Awakening self-compassion is often the greatest challenge people face on the spiritual path.

You have a unique body and mind, with a particular history and conditioning. No one can offer you a formula for navigating all situations and all states of mind. Only by listening inwardly in a fresh and open way will you discern at any given time what most serves your healing and freedom.

In the Lakota/Sioux tradition, a person who is grieving is considered most wakan, most holy. There's a sense that when someone is struck by the sudden lightning of loss, he or she stands on the threshold of the spirit world. The prayers of those who grieve are considered especially strong, and it is proper to ask them for their help. You might recall what it's like to be with someone who has grieved deeply. The person has no layer of protection, nothing left to defend. The mystery is looking out through that person's eyes. For the time being, he or she has accepted the reality of loss and has stopped clinging to the past or grasping at the future. In the groundless openness of sorrow, there is a wholeness of presence and a deep natural wisdom.

Suffering is our call to attention, our call to investigate the truth of our beliefs.

We can’t understand the nature of reality until we let go of controlling our experience.

Perfection is not a prerequisite for anything but pain.

Stepping out of the busyness, stopping our endless pursuit of getting somewhere else, is perhaps the most beautiful offering we can make to our spirit.

Whatever you think or do regularly becomes a habit, a strongly conditioned pathway in the brain. The more you think about what can go wrong, the more your mind is primed to anticipate trouble. The more you lash out in anger, the more your body and mind are geared toward aggression. The more you think about how you might help others, the more your mind and heart are inclined to be generous. Just as weight lifting builds muscles, the way you direct your attention can strengthen anxiety, hostility, and addiction, or it can lead you to healing and awakening.

Like investigation, healthy doubt arises from the urge to know what is true--it challenges assumptions or the status quo in service of healing and freedom. In contrast, unhealthy doubt arises from fear or aversion, and it questions one's own basic potential or worth, or the value of another.

Mindfulness is the intentional process of paying attention, without judgment, to the unfolding of moment-by-moment experience.

I take refuge in awareness; I take refuge in truth; I take refuge in love

May I be filled with lovingkindness; may I be held in lovingkindness. May I feel safe and at ease. May I feel protected from inner and outer harm. May I be happy. May I accept myself just as I am. May I touch deep, natural peace. May I know the natural joy of being alive. May I find true refuge within my own being. May my heart and mind awaken; may I be free.

The biggest illusion about a path of refuge is that we are on our way somewhere else, on our way to becoming a different kind of person. But ultimately, our refuge is not outside ourselves, not somewhere in the future - it is always and already here.

We find true refuge whenever we recognize the silent space of awareness behind all our busy doing and striving. We find refuge whenever our hearts open with tenderness and love. We find refuge whenever we connect with the innate clarity and intelligence of our true nature.

When we disconnect from the body, we are pulling away from the energetic expression of our being that connects us with all of life. By imagining a great tree uprooted from earth, we can sense the unnaturalness, violence, and suffering of this severed belonging. The experience of being uprooted is a kind of dying.

Just as a clear pond reflects the sky, mindfulness allows us to see the truth of our experience.

Is there anything I can do to make myself enlightened? As little as you can do to make the sun rise in the morning. Then of what use are the spiritual exercises you prescribe? To make sure you are not asleep when the sun begins to rise.

Rather than seeking true refuge, we turn toward what I call false refuges. They are false because while they may provide a temporary sense of comfort or security, they create more suffering in the long run. We might, like Pam, have a fear of failure and take refuge in staying busy, in striving to perform well, or in taking care of others. Or we might feel unlovable and take refuge in pursuing wealth or success. Maybe we fear being criticized, and take refuge in avoiding risks and always pleasing others. Or we feel anxious or empty and take refuge in alcohol, overeating, or surfing the Web. Instead of consenting and opening to what we are actually feeling, our turn toward false refuges is a way of avoiding emotional pain. But this only takes us further from real comfort, further from home.

...other people want to feel important and loved. Just that. [author's patient, Phil]

But even when habits of blaming or defensiveness arise, something profound can change if those involved bring a committed presence to what is happening. This is when community becomes a refuge—a place of true awakening.

I have just two instructions for you this week. One is to breathe, and one is to smile.

The most important thing is remembering the most important thing.

it is our mistaken perception of who we are that’s causing the difficulty.

Presence is not some exotic state that we need to search for or manufacture. In the simplest terms, it is the felt sense of wakefulness, openness, and tenderness that arises when we are fully here and now with our experience.

no matter how hard we try to control life, we have no sway over the bedrock realities of change, loss, and mortality.

As told in her book Heart Politics, social activist Fran Peavey was walking on the Stanford University campus one day when she happened upon a group of people carrying video equipment. They were crowding around a male chimp that was running loose and a female chimp that was on a long chain. The chimpanzees were apparently there for some research purposes, and the scientists and spectators (most of them men) were trying to get them to mate. The male didn’t need much encouragement. He was grunting and tugging at the smaller chimp’s chain, while she was whimpering and trying to avoid his advances. A feeling of empathy swept through Peavey. Then something happened that she would never forget: Suddenly the female chimp yanked her chain out of the male’s grasp. To my amazement, she walked through the crowd, straight over to me, and took my hand. Then she led me across the circle to the only other two women in the crowd, and she joined hands with one of them. The three of us stood together in a circle. I remember the feeling of that rough palm against mine. The little chimp had recognized us and reached out across all the years of evolution to form her own support group.