10 Pieces of Native American Wisdom That Will Inspire the Way You Live Your Life

Years ago, my little brother and I were playing cowboys and Indians.

As the older brother, I dictated the play session (of course), so I decided that my brother was supposed to die when I shot him. Of course, he was the Indian. The cowboy kills him, right?

Bang. There goes the Indian.

This might sound insensitive, but when you consider the fact that I was 5 at the time, you begin to realize that it was less about a lack of awareness or sensitivity and more about a widespread misconception about Native American culture and “American’s” relationship with them.

Growing up in the U.S., my understanding of Native American culture was vague at best.

To start, we grew up calling them Indians. You’d think that 500 years after Christopher Columbus discovered the Americas we’d have stopped calling them Indians. I guess not.

Next, all we ever thought “Indians” did was build teepees, carve arrow stones, hunt animals, at times fight each other, and dance.

And while they did do those things, what we knew was nothing more than a surface understanding of Native American culture.

I’ve always been fascinated with how wisdom transcends time and space. Completely separate countries, cultures, and time periods point us directly towards the same universal principles. I consider them the most important principles to live by. The foundation of how we should live our life, let’s call it.

A few months back, I started researching Native American wisdom in my efforts to continue pulling together the wisdom traditions of the world to find those common themes.

What I found blew me away. The depth of wisdom that has and still exists within the Native American culture today is astounding.

There was no known system of writing within any of the ancient Native American cultures (not until 1821), so the wisdom of these beautiful people continued for hundreds of years (if not longer) by word of mouth.

Luckily, just as the words of the Buddha were passed down by word of mouth for 400 years until they were written down by anyone, the wisdom of the many Native American cultures has now been written down and recorded for everyone to experience.

I hope you enjoy these beautiful pieces of Native American wisdom.

10 Pieces of Native American Wisdom That Will Inspire the Way You Live Your Life

1. Enter the Sacred Space

Wakan Tanka, Great Mystery, Teach me how to trust My heart, My mind, My intuition, My inner knowing, The senses of my body, The blessings of my spirit. Teach me to trust these things So that I may enter my Sacred Space And love beyond my fear, And thus Walk in Balance With the passing of each glorious Sun.

- Lakota Prayer

According to Native American wisdom, the Sacred Space is the space between the in-breath and out-breath.

If you’ve studied Eastern philosophy of any kind or are at all familiar with meditation techniques, you’ll immediately recognize this as significant.

Paying attention to the space between the in-breath and the out-breath, or inhalation and exhalation, is a meditation technique that’s been practiced for thousands of years. This is because the space between the two has much spiritual significance.

The space between breaths is said to be where we enter back into our natural state, where “I” falls away and we exist as “one” with the world around us.

It’s in releasing the ego, the sense of a separate self, which thinks it’s independent when it’s really interdependent, that we transcend fear and realize true love.

Also, the phrase Walk in Balance refers to having spirituality (referred to as Heaven) and physicality (referred to as Earth) in harmony.

This as well is profound. This old Lakota prayer is telling us what Eastern wisdom (and our own intuition) has told us for thousands of years: that Heaven and Earth are not separate.

They can at first feel as though they’re separate, but with practice we realize they’re really two aspects of the same thing, therefore balance between the two is balance within our lives.

2. Realize “Oneness”

And while I stood there I saw more than I can tell, And I understood more than I saw; For I was seeing in a sacred manner The shapes of things in the spirit, And the shape of all shapes as they must Live together like one being.

- Black Elk, Black Elk Speaks

The sense of our “oneness” is something spoken about across all cultures. This sense is very much intuitive, and can be developed with practice.

Here, Black Elk speaks almost Zen-like in referring to seeing more than he can tell. A very deep insight into the nature of existence, and it’s clear here that Native American wisdom was very deep and very profound.

In our everyday lives, we encounter this same intuitive feeling of “oneness” as well, albeit most of the time it’s far more subtle. During these moments, it’s important to not identify this feeling as nonsense and realize that it’s our ability to connect with the greater truth of existence on a deeper level.

We are one, like a large organism. And in the same way that organs, tissue, veins, nerves, and the other parts that make up our body can sometimes seem separate, but are always very much an inseparable part of the same one greater system, we too are intrinsically connected and should live in a way that we become more and more aware of this interconnected nature and seek to express it in our daily lives.

And this always results in more love, compassion, kindness, and greater peace.

3. Serve, respect, and live without fear

So live your life that the fear of death can never enter your heart. Trouble no one about their religion; Respect others in their view, and demand that they respect yours. Love your life, perfect your life, beautify all things in your life.

Seek to make your life long and its purpose in the service of your people. Prepare a noble death song for the day when you go over the great divide. Always give a word or a sign of salute when meeting or passing a friend, Even a stranger, when in a lonely place. Show respect to all people and grovel to none.

When you arise in the morning give thanks for the food and for the joy of living. If you see no reason for giving thanks, the fault lies only in yourself.

Abuse no one and no thing, for abuse turns the wise ones to fools And robs the spirit of its vision.

When it comes your time to die, be not like those whose hearts are filled With the fear of death, so that when their time comes they weep And pray for a little more time to live their lives over again in a different way. Sing your death song and die like a hero going home.

- Chief Tecumseh (Crouching Tiger) Shawnee Nation 1768-1813

To say anything here I think would be to complicate the already perfect message that this communicates. So I’ll leave it at that: serve, respect, and live without fear.

4. Gross National….Peace?

I do not think the measure of a civilization Is how tall its buildings of concrete are. But rather how well its people have learned to relate To their environment and fellow man.

- Sun Bear of the Chippewa Tribe

For some reason, after reading this it instantly reminded me of the country of Bhutan’s “Gross National Happiness”.

For those that don’t know Gross National Happiness, or GNH, was a term coined by Bhutan’s then current king, Jigme Singye Wangchuck, and used as the nation’s new metric for determining the prosperity of the country. It was created to promote the development of the countries Buddhist spiritual values (i.e. happiness) as opposed to the Western materialistic centered GDP (Gross Domestic Product).

Essentially, it was them saying, “Hey, we want to value the well-being and happiness of our people instead of material ‘stuff’.”

Pretty cool right? Well, to me, Sun Bear is backing up this very same ideal, except perhaps in a slightly different sense. In this way, he’s describing more our ability to live in harmony with the world around us- both nature and humanity specifically.

Placing that as the major guiding principle of any nation (or our own individual lives), to me, is both a powerful and revolutionary idea.

5. Touch the Earth

There is a road in the hearts of all of us, hidden and seldom traveled, Which leads to an unknown, secret place. The old people came literally to love the soil, And they sat or reclined on the ground with a feeling of Being close to a mothering power.

Their teepees were built upon the earth And their altars were made of earth. The soul was soothing, strengthening, cleansing and healing.

That is why the old Indian still sits upon the earth instead of Propping himself up and away from its life giving forces. For him, to sit or lie upon the ground is to be able to think more deeply And to feel more keenly. He can see more clearly into the mysteries of Life and come closer in kinship to other lives about him.

- Chief Luther Standing Bear

At first glance, his words may seem to communicate something mystical- and in fact it does refer to something very deep- our ability to come in touch with our true nature when touching the Earth- but it’s also referring to something very concrete which we can easily do in our everyday lives:

Touch the Earth.

You’ve probably heard someone- a friend, or loved one perhaps- mention before that being in nature helps them clear their mind and think more clearly.

This isn’t just hearsay, you can test this for yourself. On an especially hectic day, go to a nearby park or hiking trail and take a moment to relax among the trees or walk the trail and feel as your mind begins to clear and your stress and tension begins to dissipate.

No matter what you believe or don’t believe about the healing and demystifying powers of being close to the Earth, or why exactly you think a natural environment clears our mind, it can’t be argued that being close to nature has an impact on our well-being.

And this may even extend to the physical body. The practice of “earthing” is the act of walking barefoot or placing our bodies on a natural surface, and while the science is still young there’s been promise in the findings to support that connecting directly with the Earth in some way can result in better sleep, less pain, reduced stress and tension, and improved immune function.

6. Show kindness to all

Like the grasses showing tender faces to each other, Thus should we do. For this was the wish of the Grandfathers of the World.

- Black Elk

Another simple but very powerful message. The message couldn’t be simpler: show kindness to others.

Anything said other than that would be to complicate things, so I’ll keep it at that.

7. Meditate to gain clarity, then act with courage

When you are in doubt, be still, and wait; When doubt no longer exists for you, then go forward with courage. So long as mists envelop you, be still; Be still until the sunlight pours through and dispels the mists, as it surely will. Then act with courage.

- Ponca Chief White Eagle (1800's to 1914)

This verse almost seems to suggest some form of meditation- sitting in silence- so it was particularly surprising to me.

When clouds exist within our mind, we have no way of knowing what the right action is to take. When we act during moments such as these, it can lead us to a lot of trouble.

Clarity in life is priceless, as without it you’re “flying blind” and are subject to the winds of chance. It’s wise to devote a part of your life to cultivating and maintaining great clarity, as this itself is what will lead you to peace and happiness.

And when you get there? Don’t hesitate. Know that you have the truth within you. Know that you’re ‘right’, and that what you’re doing is good. Stand up, move forward, and act with courage.

8. Learn from the Earth

Earth, Teach Me

Earth teach me quiet ~ as the grasses are still with new light. Earth teach me suffering ~ as old stones suffer with memory. Earth teach me humility ~ as blossoms are humble with beginning. Earth teach me caring ~ as mothers nurture their young. Earth teach me courage ~ as the tree that stands alone. Earth teach me limitation ~ as the ant that crawls on the ground. Earth teach me freedom ~ as the eagle that soars in the sky. Earth teach me acceptance ~ as the leaves that die each fall. Earth teach me renewal ~ as the seed that rises in the spring. Earth teach me to forget myself ~ as melted snow forgets its life. Earth teach me to remember kindness ~ as dry fields weep with rain.

- An Ute Prayer

The connection that Native American culture has had with the Earth is stunningly beautiful.

As much as any other culture on Earth, the Native American culture shows us clearly how nature, including the example set by nature, gives us everything we need to live in peace and harmony.

9. What we do to others, we do to ourselves

Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect.

- Chief Seattle, 1854

The idea that all things are connected once again draws direct parallels to Buddhist and Hindu wisdom.

To understand deeply our interconnected and interdependent nature is to understand that we’re all woven together deeply, like one great big tapestry.

To truly understand just how intricately we’re woven together can seem almost impossible, but the idea is simple: what we do to others, we do to ourselves.

This includes not only our actions towards others but also the thoughts and feelings we express in our mind towards others.

Stop separating “I” and “them” and you’ll see that greater peace and happiness will follow.

10. Light up your corner of the world (by realizing the first peace)

The first peace, which is the most important, Is that which comes within the souls of people When they realize their relationship, Their oneness, with the universe and all its powers,

And when they realize that at the center Of the universe dwells Wakan-Taka (the Great Spirit), And that this center is really everywhere, it is within each of us. This is the real peace, and the others are but reflections of this.

The second peace is that which is made between two individuals, And the third is that which is made between two nations. But above all you should understand that there can never Be peace between nations until there is known that true peace, Which, as I have often said, is within the souls of men.

- Black Elk, Oglala Sioux & Spiritual Leader (1863 - 1950)

In Buddhism, it’s understood that the best way you can help others is by working on yourself.

This is what’s sometimes called “lighting up your corner of the world”, and it refers to the way you can inspire those you meet by the example you set and how this is more powerful than anything else you can do to help others. And it’s here that Black Elk is affirming that understanding through Native American wisdom.

But this doesn’t mean, “earn a bunch of money, gain a lot of power, and achieve greatness”, this refers to awakening to your true nature and finding true peace within, something that Black Elk understands clearly.

And again we’re brought back to realizing the ‘oneness’ of all things. He even draws a direct parallel to the Eastern wisdom of, “the center which is everywhere and in everything” (the way in which each of us feels like we’re the center of the universe, the universal perspective) in saying:

And when they realize that at the center Of the universe dwells Wakan-Taka (the Great Spirit), And that this center is really everywhere, it is within each of us.

Native American wisdom is both vast and immensely beautiful. I hope you can use these insights to inspire your life in the same way that they’ve inspired mine.

How Asking "What Would the Buddha Do?" Can Unlock Your Intuitive Wisdom

We all look up to someone.

That person could be a teacher or mentor, friend or family member, or someone else from afar.

Whoever it is, we wish we could be more like them.

For me, for many years this was Brandon Boyd of the rock band Incubus.

In high school, I sang in a band with a couple of my good friends (yes, I sang...don't laugh. OK go ahead...but only a little).

We were never very good, because we didn't work very hard, but we really enjoyed playing together (I didn't learn the value of hard work until years after I left high school).

I didn't just want to be like Brandon Boyd, I practically wanted to be him.

His voice was amazing, the band's music was incredible (I still love the band, even today), he lived in a way that he expressed his creativity in everything he did, and he openly expressed and stood up for values that mattered to him.

This was the first time I really took to writing of any kind. As the singer and lyricist I wrote the lyrics for our band Samsara.

Yes, our band was named after the Buddhist principle of the cycle of birth and death. I know, you don't have to say it...awesome (half-joking).

Being pretty shy and reserved growing up, it was really the first time I felt that I had the opportunity to open up about things that bothered me as well as things that mattered to me.

Brandon did the same. Whether it was hinting (and even sometimes being pretty straightforward) about his unhappiness with the current president (this was during George W.), opening up about the way someone tried to throw their negativity onto him and how he wasn't going to engage in it, or just questioning establishment in a healthy way, he did that same thing song after song. And I greatly admired that.

What I've learned about the way we admire others

Looking back, I see both good and bad in this.

We need to understand that when we have such a strong desire to be like someone else, there's often a lot of ego involved, and that means our desire is at least partly misguided.

When our ego is involved, it means that we're really just puffing ourselves up, or at least trying to puff ourselves up, and that won't every truly help us in any way.

So long as we attach to this desire to be like someone else, in any way, we're telling ourselves that we're not truly happy and rather have something else than what's right in front of us (another form of rejecting the present moment and living in our heads, never a formula for peace or happiness).

But there's another aspect to this kind of admiration: respect.

On the other side of desire and inflating the ego to give us a greater sense of self-worth is a very genuine and authentic respect for the universal values we hold dear which that person exemplifies.

In my case, I genuinely appreciated the way that Brandon lived his inspiration. In every moment he expressed his creativity. He lived completely free, unbound, being himself in every moment.

While attaching to the person, and as a result in some form rejecting reality (which always creates friction), leads to us harming ourselves, genuine respect and appreciation for qualities such as this in others is very healthy.

To see this personified tells us that it's possible, it gives us an example, and the reality is we live off of these examples every day of our lives. If we didn't have these examples we wouldn't have anything: we wouldn't know how meditate, we wouldn't know how to drive our car, we wouldn't know how to start a business or do our job, and we wouldn't even know how to tie our shoes. We wouldn't know how to live.

So in this way, we should celebrate and appreciate these positive examples in our lives, so long as we stay wary of the attachment that can happen as a result.

What would _____ do?

Having cleared the air so to speak, making it clear in what way we should look up to and value others and how that's beneficial, we can use these examples in our own lives to make incredible positive change.

This is simply the practice of asking yourself, "What would they do?", and it's very much a meditation on living the qualities we most value in every moment of our lives.

It's easy to practice. Just ask yourself "What would they do?" throughout the course of each day, or even just occasionally, and see how that instantly changes the way you behave for the better.

You could do the exercise:

• Throughout your daily activities
• In the morning before your day starts with regards to your overall activity for the day or specifically with regards to an important event
• Or at the end of the day in reflection to see how you could have handled yourself better.

Nowadays, I'd use a different example of virtuous action and qualities I'd most like to emulate, but Brandon's honesty and open creativity still inspire me.

If I'm sitting down to write, I can ask myself, "What would Brandon do?" and be reminded of his openness and honesty during the creative process and in turn be reminded to not hold anything back (but still being kind and compassionate in the process).

Nowadays, I'd use an example like the Buddha or Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh.

As I go about my everyday life, interacting with strangers, loved ones, coworkers, and doing various tasks, the question, "What would the Buddha do?" completely shifts my perspective and brings clarity to my actions.

In any given moment, we have a choice. That choice isn't so black and white, but it often truly does come down to doing what's nourishing and wholesome versus doing what's harmful to ourselves or others. In these moments, we truly make the choice to be person A vs. person B.

With this exercise, combined with the light of mindfulness practice, you have the ability to stop and make a conscious choice, and "What would the Buddha do?" can guide you towards what's wholesome and nourishing.

Now, obviously, we don't know exactly what they'd do. But that's not the point. In this way, you're not so much guided by them as you are your own intuitive wisdom, a type of wisdom which we all hold within us. It's a sort of conscious, or mindful, wisdom.

When we begin to realize this, we can start to gain a great sense of confidence towards ourselves. A healthy, non-ego based confidence which will stay with us forever and can be cultivated further with practice.

So, ask yourself "What would the Buddha do?" to bring you clarity, unlock your own intuitive wisdom, and nourish your sense of peace and joy in everyday life.

How an Old Pair of Shoes Helped Me Realize Freedom

The fear of what others think of you. It's one of the most pervading challenges we'll deal with in our entire life.

Why is it such a difficult challenge? Because it seeps into almost everything we do, each and every day.

I find it funny that we feel most free, most liberated, when we're doing things in a way that we don't care about what others think of us or what we're doing.

But the pull to care what others think of us is so strong, that even after experiencing a liberating experience such as that, we continue to be held in its vice.

One of the first projects I worked on when starting Buddhaimonia was a series on the top regrets of the dying (which is no longer in the archives unfortunately, but I'll be updating the series and reposting it as a single post sometime in the future).

Do you know what were essentially the two major regrets? They were:

- Living in a way that the person cared (or cared too much) what other people thought of them and their actions. - Not being authentic and following what they truly wanted to do with their lives (which in almost every case was most associated with #1).

We'll come back to that in a moment. First, the shoes...

The shoes

A little less than a year ago, I got a new pair of Toms.

I love Toms, I love the style and appreciate what the company stands for. I've worn them for the past couple of years, but unfortunately I have a penchant for tearing mine up in a short period of time.

Below is a picture of my old pair and the new pair I got. I felt the need to take some pictures of my old Toms- we had been through a lot and I wanted to remember them.

As you can see, they're pretty torn up, especially the toe area (probably due to me being barefoot most of the time, I rarely wear socks).

Well, as time went on, that fresh and beautiful new pair of Toms began to ware as well.

This new pair has now gone through much more than the last:

Yeah, I know. You don't have to say it- they're crazy. But they're my crazy.

But this isn't a blog post about my shoes, this is a post about what I realized as I continued to wear my shoes as they became more and more torn up.

As time went on, I began noticing that I felt uncomfortable putting them on when I was getting dressed up to go somewhere public, particularly when it was a busy place like a mall or gathering with friends.

After some time, it hit me- I was worried about what others would think of me.

Wow. They must not have any money.

Really...are you poor?

Dirty.

Trashy.

How sad.

These are all the things that I realized ran through my head as a part of wearing my shoes out in public places (not always, but most of the time).

Most of us would absolutely hate to admit it (it’s not easy for me to write about it), but we don't like being thought of as these things. And that's perfectly OK, the majority of us were brought up to think these things were bad and to do whatever we had to either avoid them or change our situation so that we weren't them. It’s not our fault we turned out thinking that way.

For most of us, this is a part of our negative self-talk. A very critical part.

One of the difficult parts about dealing with it is it's so subtle. My old pair was beaten up, and I felt the same way at times, but it never hit me. I never noticed it (but I always felt it- waking up can take time).

The meditation

After gaining some clarity about the situation over the past year, noticing more and more how I felt when I put the shoes on to go out, I decided to make it into a little exercise, or meditation if you will.

I decided to continue wearing my shoes- as confidently and proudly as ever- and to simply become mindful of the various thoughts and feelings that would arise in me.

This was different from other mindfulness practices, though, because I wasn't just observing. There was a special effect which happened as a result of becoming aware of these thoughts and feelings in this way: I began sanding away at my ego.

I began to notice that each time I'd wear my shoes out to a busy location, thoughts and feelings would fly at me from time to time (at this point my mindfulness practice had magnified my ability to notice them, so they felt quite strong).

And each time I'd recognize them with my mindfulness, I'd feel that uncomfortable feeling of having to face up to a part of my negative self-talk and a certain wrong perception.

As time went on, and I continued to practice in this way, I felt as though my ego was shedding away, at least to some small degree.

I was almost always uncomfortable, and I rarely liked the thoughts and feelings that arose, but over time it did become easier to handle. And after a few months, I began to feel quite liberated.

I felt proud of my shoes and happy with myself in my own skin (more so than ever). Thoughts still came up from time to time, and I still felt the sting occasionally, but the change was quite noticeable.

And you know what else I realized? Excuse the language, but...

Nobody gave a crap.

- No one ever cared about my shoes. - No one ever thought anything about them. - No one ever even noticed them.

They were all too busy worrying about themselves.

We're all too busy worrying about ourselves.

Every day that we step out and live our lives in a way that we care about what others think of us, it's just an exercise of the ego flexing its muscle over us.

These people I passed by in malls, stores, and gatherings didn't think those thoughts about me- I thought those thoughts about me. It was all ego.

But if we can have courage and put ourselves in uncomfortable situations, challenging the ego in little ways (even if it's just a tiny step forward), then we can begin to realize a great sense of liberation.

So get out there and get uncomfortable, in a way that really challenges your ego:

1. Get uncomfortable
2. Have courage
3. Be mindful, be compassionate
4. Stay strong- freedom will come with time.

Remember, all it takes is little steps forward. Get creative.

So, how do you plan to get uncomfortable?

3 Ways Intimate Love Keeps Us from Peace and Happiness and How to Transcend Through Self-Love

In life, things always go wrong when we depend on another for fulfillment.

When we depend on another to fill us up, our well-being is contingent upon countless factors completely out of our control.

And yet, we go back to love time and time again. Why do we do that to ourselves? Why do we continue to put ourselves in harms way without a second thought?

The fundamental problem is a lack of self-worth. It’s a lack of self-worth that draws us towards others in an attempt to feel loved. It all comes down to an issue of love.

We believe intimate love to be of the highest calling, that thing which will truly fill us up and allow us to become fulfilled for the rest of our life.

If you're thinking, "that's SO me", don't worry, it's so common I've found it to be almost universal (I was the same way myself).

When I say low self-worth, I really mean you have a lack of love for yourself. And because we all need love, if we’re not finding it within ourselves we inevitably go somewhere else to find it.

This is often the reason we turn towards over-indulging in things such as food, sex, and intimate relationships.

By far the most common version of this is the idea of “the one”.

Perpetuated by stories from movies, books, and T.V., the idea of that one special someone coming along some day and changing our lives forever (leading to lasting happiness, etc., etc.) is a deadly myth.

True love between people is in fact possible, and it can be a beautiful part of life, but if acted on without wisdom and understanding it almost always becomes a source of great suffering. Relationships aren't bad, it’s when we try to fulfill our need for love in others that things go wrong.

When I was in my early teens, I had my first love. Her name was Stephanie. I was crazy about Stephanie in every way imaginable and couldn’t have imagined spending the rest of my life without her.

But then she broke my heart...and I was left crushed and very confused (for quite a while).

I had attached practically my entire source of peace, happiness, and self-worth to being with her to the point where when I lost her I felt completely empty.

With time I got over her, but it wasn't until just a few years ago that I realized exactly why we're so attracted to falling in love.

I saw love as the “end-all-be-all”, the highest calling in life and the thing which fulfilled a person’s desire for real happiness.

It makes sense when you think about it, falling in love promises us a total escape from the humdrum of everyday life and a flurry of intense emotions like few things allow us to experience.

Ultimately, if you have no other concept of something higher than it, you inevitably gravitate towards intimate love.

But there is something higher- true love. It’s available to you in every moment of every day and doesn't depend on finding romantic love.

The ways we suffer because of love

Intimate love can be a beautiful and wonderful part of life, just in the way that connecting with anyone deeply can be very fulfilling, but at the heart of your being it can’t take the place of true love. True love can only be cultivated from within yourself.

Love, true love, is the ever-present nature of all things. It’s a love defined by compassion, caring, and kindness towards ourselves and all other beings.

When we have true love, we feel as though everything is at peace. When we lack true love, we feel as though there’s a crevice within our hearts which we just can’t fill no matter what we do to try and fill it.

The problem is many of us don’t know true love exists, let alone how to cultivate it, most importantly starting with love for ourselves (self-love). And as a result, the place we most often go to fill ourselves up is through intimate relationships.

The pain we feel as a result of intimate relationships doesn’t just come from the disappointment when a relationship goes wrong though, it happens on all stages of the search for, and act of being in, love:

1. Having not found someone yet, but still placing our sense of fulfillment in being with someone, we feel empty and as if our life has yet to begin.
2. Being with someone, but still not feeling fulfilled, we become confused and frustrated and sometimes that even leads to adultery.
3. When our partner doesn’t fully align with the image of our ideal partner in our heads we’re left confused and frustrated and end up either forcing the person to become someone else or quitting on the relationship altogether.
4. When our love leaves this life, we’re once again left feeling empty because our entire sense of self-worth had always been placed upon them. The suffering we feel when we lose a loved one is real and unavoidable, but it’s something we can either be ruled by or overcome through equanimity.

The reason we suffer is always the same: we search out intimate relationships with others in an attempt to fill the feeling of “voidness” in our hearts due to a lack of self-love (or true love, which is boundless and includes all beings).

So, what are we supposed to do? Are we doomed to the cycle of pleasure and pain that is intimate love? Should we avoid relationships altogether? Or is there another way?

3 Ways Intimate Love Keeps Us from Peace and Happiness and How to Transcend Through Self-Love

Self-love is possible for everyone and there are easy and practical ways to cultivate it, both as formal daily practices and as informal practices within daily life.

The most important thing is to allow this idea to sit within your consciousness:

You don’t need someone to be happy and at peace.Fulfillment does not require intimate love, it only requires true love which is cultivated from within.

The more aware you become of this idea the more you’ll begin to see things arise within your life and in your mind that align with this idea, and the more easily you’ll be able to move towards it.

Below, you’ll find 3 major ways in which intimate love attempts to keep us from peace and happiness along with my suggestions for what to do about them:

1. Transcending the idea that “I need someone to be happy/feel complete"

Whether you’re with someone now, or are seeking a partner, this is arguably the most critical point because it deals directly with the heart of the matter- looking outside of yourself for fulfillment.

It’s a mistake though to think getting over this requires some intellectual process, or some cheesy affirmation (“I love myself!”). This requires to cultivation of true self-love.

Closely tied to this is taking care of yourself in a general sense, in other words nourishing your mind on a daily basis. Someone who meditates formally and makes the intention to be mindful in their daily life will inevitably have less of a problem with this because not only will they feel more at peace and at ease in a general sense, they’ll also have a clearer mind with which to notice when these thoughts and feelings arise.

So, how do we cultivate self-love? The heart of self-love and true love cultivating practices is loving-kindness meditation (or LKM), which is a simple and rather enjoyable form of meditation in which the meditator generates positive feelings of love, caring, & kindness and transfers them from one person to another, starting with yourself and moving up from someone you love to someone you hate (or at least dislike) and finally letting these feelings expand to all beings.

Here’s the main portion of the instructions for loving-kindness meditation from my guide How to Practice Loving Kindness Meditation (you can read the full guide here):

"The general idea behind LKM is that you’re sending well-wishes, or positive thoughts, to yourself and others...

...here are the instructions for practicing loving-kindness meditation:

- Hold an image of the person in your mind. Make this image as clear as possible and feel your connection with the person. - Generate feelings of love. Chant/say your mantra to yourself or picture beautiful imagery. - Imagine sending those feelings of love to the person. Let those feelings swell as high as they will go. - Imagine transferring those feelings of love to the next person. From you to someone you respect/who cared for you, then to a friend/family member, then to someone neutral, then to someone you dislike, all of those people together as one, and finally to all beings.

The general advice for beginning practice is to focus on each person for 3-5 minutes and generating love for them before transferring it and moving on to the next person."

Loving-kindness meditation is a great "formal" (as in daily, scheduled) practice which can be done easily in a few minutes at any time of day.

By practicing loving-kindness meditation you'll not only begin to generate self-love, but love for all beings, and those will both serve you infinitely for the rest of your life.

2. Overcoming attachment to an idea and accepting the person as they are

If you love a person, you say to that person, "Look, I love you, whatever that may be. I’ve seen quite a bit of it and I know there’s lots that I haven’t seen, but still it’s you and I want you to be what you want to be. And I won’t be happy if I’ve got you in a cage. You’d be a bird without song.”

- Alan Watts

Due to the stories we’ve grown up with from T.V., movies, books, and even games and the ideas which have accompanied them and ripened in our consciousness, many of us have developed certain ideas about what our perfect partner would be, or will be, like.

This isn’t just unrealistic, it’s harmful because our imagination will never match up to any living and breathing person.

What ends up happening is we search out someone based on these imaginary qualities, hoping to fulfill as many as possible in one person, and then pursue. Once we’ve been with the person for some time though we realize they’re not our perfect man or women and have a number of their own faults or “flaws”.

These faults or flaws are really just moments where the idea we have in our heads of the perfect lover doesn’t add up with the real person though, wherein we naturally resist and cause friction with the reality of things.

Some people try to change the person, some people don’t bother and decide to go elsewhere, and some bang heads endlessly not even completely sure what’s wrong with the relationship in the first place.

But we need to realize that our partner won’t ever match up to this perfect image in our minds. This image is nothing but an idea. An unrealistic idea perpetuated by fantasies, not reality.

But that’s totally OK, because if you take the time to truly accept the person as they are, something interesting happens.

You not only realize they’re perfect just as they are, but, now having the right water and sunlight, they blossom into the beautiful flower you know them to be. This is the power of true love.

In mindfulness practice, we’re nonjudgmental with what arises. We accept whatever arises fully and openly without labelling it “bad” or “good” or dividing reality in any which way.

We welcome what comes with the fullness of our being. And when we do this, good and bad fall away and what we’re left with is a grounded sense of peace and equanimity.

In just the same way, when we discover someone whom we can love and trust we need to be willing to openly accept them fully if we ever hope to experience their true beauty.

In my post, Why This Piece of Zen Wisdom is Critical to Helping Your Relationships Thrive, I talk about this very thing. If you’d like more information and actionable advice on how to deal with this point, I’d suggest checking it out (you can read it here).

Keep in mind though, to do this you need to establish a firm base of self-love before anything else can happen. We can’t expect to have the confidence to let go and allow the other person to be who they are without first being able to stand on our own two feet.

In just the same way that mindfulness is the basis for accepting without judgment, it’s also very important for cultivating self-love, because it’s through mindfulness that we can identify self-destructive patterns and make a shift towards nourishing ourselves instead of breaking ourselves down.

Plus, simply the light mindfulness shines on these issues often makes them lose much of their power.

3. Cultivating the equanimity to let go of a lost love

This is perhaps the most difficult of the three points I mention here.

This includes not just someone who got away, but most especially when your longtime love leaves this life, and as a result leaves you feeling empty and meaningless.

In such situations, it’s not realistic to think that the pain we feel for a lost love will just float away one day. Sometimes in life we experience things that are unavoidable and will affect us deeply.

But the problem isn’t that these things happen. The problem is that we’re still attaching our sense of self-worth to them to the point where we’re not just deeply saddened and sorrowful but altogether paralyzed by the lose of their presence.

Life goes on, and human beings have a remarkable ability to get back up and move on, finding real happiness even just a short while after a traumatic experience. But we need to give ourselves the opportunity to be happy again, and so long as we attach our sense of self-worth to the person we’ll never be let free.

To practice loving-kindness with ourselves is to set ourselves free in a very real sense. It gives us the ability to fill the illusory void which exists in our hearts and move on with our lives in peace.

Loving-kindness doesn't just have to be practiced in a formal sense though, you can send yourself (and others) loving-kindness at any time of day. To learn how to practice "everyday loving-kindness", read How to Overcome Daily Challenges with Loving-Kindness Meditation.

But there’s more to this process than just self-love.

True love is a very significant teaching, not just in Buddhism but in many of the world’s spiritual traditions. True love hints at the understanding of interconnectivity between all beings, the interbeing nature of all things and people.

With diligent meditation practice, we can begin to realize the truth of this universal love for ourselves, even if only slightly at first. When this happens, we can begin to see others in a stronger light, as if the lines which once separated “you” from “them” have started to fade.

In this way, by practicing mindfulness in day-to-day life and connecting with others in positive ways, we can see our love in those we meet and interact with.

This doesn’t just expand our true universal love, but it also helps us come to peace with those we’ve lost (it’s all connected).

No matter what stage you’re at on your path to pursuing intimate love, you don’t need another to make you whole.

Intimate love between two people can be beautiful and amazing, if both partners can move beyond attachment and on to a place of "whole-heartedness”, but know that at the heart of your being you’ll always have everything you need within you to realize true peace and happiness just as you are.

How to Use the Energy of Mindfulness to Stop, Calm, Rest, and Heal the Mind

"Don’t try to feel at peace, be peace."

About 6 months before my first son Malik was born, I had a panic attack.

At the time, I didn’t know what it was. In fact, I didn’t even completely know where it was coming from.

I knew I was worried about money, and figuring out what I wanted to do with my life, but I also had a lot of anxiety about my future son. I didn’t just need to support him, I wanted to be an example to him and thought, “How can I be an example to someone else?” “How am I qualified to raise a child and bring them into the world?"

And worse, every day of my life I was running around trying to fix my problems (even when I had no reason to- it became habitual). I was rushing, racing, worrying, and even panicking, but never stopping, calming, resting, or healing myself.

Little did I know, my long-term stress and anxiety had begun to turn into a more severe form of anxiety, and that was an early warning sign.

In a very real way, the majority of us live out our lives at war with ourselves.

We push ourselves to the brink, never allowing a break, and act like stopping to rest is a sign of weakness.

Our minds are in chaos and we have no idea how to get out of this self-imposed hell.

We need to remember how to stop.

To stop, calm, rest, and heal our mind and body so that we can nourish our sense of peace and well-being.

This is the way of samatha, the first aspect of meditation practice according to the Buddha.

How to Use the Energy of Mindfulness to Stop, Calm, Rest, and Heal the Mind

Samatha is the act of calming the mind and bringing it to a state of tranquility. The best way to look at it is as a quality or state to be developed more than anything.

In my book, The Little Book of Mindfulness, I talk about it pretty extensively as it applies to mindfulness and meditation practice. If you haven’t read the book yet I’d suggest doing so as it gives you the best and most complete introduction to mindfulness practice. You can get it free (just an email is required) by clicking here.

I’ll also be talking about samatha in more detail in my free video series at the end of this month (click here to get the video series when it goes live), which I put a short preview for at the end of this post.

Samatha is the art of stopping. The art of stopping harmful patterns of thinking, calming the mind in the face of difficult emotions, resting and nourishing the mind, and allowing the mind to heal when in the presence of deep or chronic pain and suffering.

My intention with this post is to give you an introduction to each of these areas of samatha and show you how to begin putting each of them into practice to relieve stress, ease anxiety, and transform the state of your mind from friction and chaos to peace and the ability to generate joy in day-to-day life.

So here we go...

Stopping

Simply stopping our activity can be a very nourishing activity in itself, and despite its universal benefits it's something so few of us know how to do.

Try this daily for a week or two and see what a big difference it makes (and preferably, continue the practice from there):

1. Set an alarm to go off every 1-3 hours.
2. Stop. When the alarm goes off, stop what you’re doing and turn your attention to your body.
3. Be mindful. Become aware of the sensation of your breath either going in & out of your nose or of the rising and falling of your abdomen.
4. Follow the breath. Follow the length of each breath, lightly concentrating on it from start to finish.
5. Interrupted? Bring your attention back. When your concentration breaks, due to a thought, feeling, sensation, or something which you can’t yet pinpoint, acknowledge it (or the interruption in a general sense, if you can’t identify what it is), and gently bring your attention back to your breath.
6. A minute of mindful breathing. Do this for about 60 seconds.

The first aspect of samatha, stopping, is about more than just stopping in a physical sense, though. Learning how to stop is also about stopping harmful patterns of thinking, like the habitual patterns that make us rush around all day long.

Our habit energies are very strong. Our volition, or intentional effort, is the opposite of our habit energy. In theory, it sounds like we should just be able to “decide” to change our life in certain ways, but the problem is our habit energy is naturally stronger than our volition.

Our habitual energy has the ability to push us around without our consent. It's the reason we sometimes do things we don’t want to do, which harm us or someone we love, even when we know better.

But mindfulness allows us to change the game and put the ball back in our court by shining a light on our habitual activity. The energy of mindfulness allows us to be present for our habit energy, acknowledge it, and often simply by doing so we can reduce its power significantly.

The next time you notice yourself succumb to a bad habit, whether big or small, acknowledge it mindfully and pay attention to the thoughts and feelings arising along with it. What are you telling yourself when you commit the act? What are you feeling?

In our example, the key habit in question would be the idea that you need to rush around all day to get everything done, or simply that you rush around whether you have a lot to do or not (rushing around may be connected to your sense of self-worth, in that if you're not rushing around you have nothing to do, and if you have nothing to do you're worthless).

When you catch yourself running, especially for no particularly good reason, ask yourself:

Why am I rushing around? What am I feeling as I rush around? What am I telling myself at this moment?

This process can often lead to important insights that will help you loosen its hold on you.

Calming

By calming, I’m referring to not only calming one’s thoughts but also calming the storm of strong emotions.

Calming one’s thinking, at least to some degree is generally a quick and natural result of mindfulness practice and is a big reason why it's so effective at relieving stress and anxiety.

To calm one’s thoughts, no special technique or instructions are necessary except to begin meditating and making an effort to be mindful in your everyday life (you can learn both by downloading my free eBook I mentioned earlier here).

But calming your thoughts is only part of the calming equation. Strong emotions are just as harmful and quite intertwined with an overactive mind, especially in the case of anxiety where fear is the most defining aspect. So without handling strong emotions, you won’t get very far.

To begin working through whatever harmful strong emotions you feel on a consistent basis, use the Buddha’s process for seeing deeply into their essential nature (or origin):

- Recognize. Simply recognize that the emotion has arisen with your mindfulness. "This fear has arisen", “I am afraid.” This is the first step. Without acknowledging the emotion, the rest of the process isn’t possible.

- Accept. Accept the emotion instead of pushing it away or attempting to ignore it. “I accept this fear.” Our usual tendency is to push these harmful emotions away or ignore them completely, so this step fundamentally changes how we treat them, which makes it a critical step.

- Embrace. Next, embrace that fear in the spirit of self-love and compassion. “I will be with this fear intimately.” We typically have a negative disposition towards these emotions, and this pattern of rejection can be very damaging. This step completely changes our relationship with our challenge and opens us up to the natural healing process of our awareness.

- Look deeply. This next step can take time. Now having accepted and embraced your fear, it’s the process of meditating and contemplating on it to see deeply into it. What is its origin? When does it arise? How does it make you feel? Questions are powerful here, however, don’t overthink it. The most important effort is to sit in meditation with the emotion and continue to be mindful of it as it arises. Imagine yourself following a rabbit down a rabbit hole to see how far it will go.

- (Realize) Insight. Insight is the “gem” which results from looking deeply- it’s what we really want. With insight, we know what to do (and what not to do) to fundamentally change the situation.

This process can take time, depending on what you’re working with, but it’s effective in helping you overcome strong emotions. I’ve used it myself to overcome a number of personal emotional challenges and limiting beliefs.

Resting

We no longer know how to rest our bodies or minds. We work long hours, weekends, day after day, making us more and more susceptible to not just stress but severe anxiety and depression (which can result from long-term stress and anxiety).

Even when we take a vacation, many of us come back more tired than when we left because we’ve become so conditioned to running that we’ve forgotten how to stop and rest.

The art of resting is the art of paying attention to our body and mind so that we can tell when we’re tired, both physically and mentally, and then consciously giving ourselves that time to rest.

And lying down isn’t our only time for rest. Meditation practice is very resting, as well as:

- Drinking a cup of tea with mindfulness - Watching the sunrise or sunset while sitting and breathing deeply - Walking mindfully in nature or even in the comfort of our home

Whatever you prefer, the important idea is to learn once again how to just take a break without desiring any particular outcome. Even to feel better. Don’t try to feel at peace, be peace.

But taking a break isn’t the only time to take resting into consideration. Perhaps the most important point with regards to resting is to learn how to act with ease and joy in your daily life.

The Buddha said that we should walk the path in an easeful and joyful way- the practice of non-practice.

To do this, what I’ve mentioned thus far in Stopping and Calming will help greatly, but I’d also suggest practicing mindfulness of body. Mindfulness of body will help you attune to your body in a very subtle way, allowing you with practice to detect more easily when you become exhausted, stressed, or anxious.

I cover mindfulness of body in my free guide, The Mindfulness Survival Guide, which you can download here.

Last but not least, it’s also important to treat your time for sleep with proper attention as well. Here are a few tips for improving the quality of your sleep:

- DON’T DO blue light 2 hours before bed. Blue light refers to the light emitted by electronic devices such as phones, tablets, computers, or T.V.)

- DO a resting exercise within 1 hour before bed such as the 3 I mentioned above.

- Actually give yourself enough time to rest. Many of us push it and try to run on less sleep than we need. Not everyone needs 8 hours, some of us run fine on 6, so you’ll need to pay attention to your body and find your perfect number.

Healing

"Healing is necessary not only within people, but between people, groups, races, and nations."

When we live our lives in a way that we don’t take care of ourselves for an extended period, things are bound to happen.

It’s the classic example of the person that avoids the doctor their whole life only to die of a condition which could have been easily handled or even avoided if caught beforehand.

When we ignore what goes on within our mind, conditions only get worse over time. And those conditions can lead to very bad things (such as depression, as I mentioned earlier).

And when we do try to take care of ourselves? It’s usually through either prescribed medication and myriad treatments or self-medicating and overindulging to bottle down the pain.

Prescribed medication and treatments can be very helpful, but when we ignore our body and mind’s natural healing capability we put ourselves at a risk far greater.

Thich Nhat Hanh uses the example of a wounded animal in the forest. When an animal becomes wounded they don’t continue running around and doing their usual routine. They search for a safe and secluded place to lie down and rest their bodies.

In a very real way, with not only our body but our mind, we can do the very same thing. And if paired with a helpful treatment which makes the process even easier, all the better.

When a little stress and anxiety, and not enough stopping, calming, and resting, turns to physical exhaustion, chronic pain, or a serious condition we need to learn how to heal our body and mind.

Healing is generally the natural result of stopping, calming, and resting and so in many ways, practical advice for healing is really just about applying aspects of everything we’ve already covered.

Like the surface of a lake, when ripples run through our minds we can’t see clearly the cause of our suffering. And if we can’t see the cause, we can’t prescribe a cure. By taking the time to stop, calm, and rest we can bring about great clarity and heal deep wounds.

But healing is also where the need for relief from pain and suffering extends outward. The world needs healing. Healing is necessary not only within people, but between people, groups, races, and nations.

Perhaps the greatest suffering is between others, not within ourselves.

By learning to stop, calm, and rest we can create great healing within ourselves and between people.