I'm going to continue to talk about self-compassion today. The Buddhist philosophy or basic analysis of how things are is that essentially everything is conditioned.

Suffering and the end of suffering are conditioned. Compassion itself is conditioned. And what do I mean by that? A simple example is that an oak tree is conditioned.

An oak tree does not just randomly appear on the earth. there's some process that went into that oak tree getting there. An acorn in the soil, some combination of water, of sunlight, fertile soil, some combination of things, of conditions that didn't occur, a tsunami or a squirrel eating it, eating the acorn, a random frost early in its life. So all these different conditions conspired to help that oak grow.

And as we engage with our spiritual practice, we start to see this legacy of conditioning that we've inherited from all the prior years of our life, to some degree our genetics, our cultural societal backdrop. All of these are conditions that have gone in to inform how we relate to difficulty. Do we relate with compassion? Do we relate with self-criticism? Do we relate with collapse, depression, with power through mind, fix it?

You know, all these different responses that we have to conditioning or that we have to suffering are conditioned. And some of the really lovely and empowering message of dharma practice is, well, what has been conditioned can be reconditioned. And so these practices that we're tapping into are practices of reconditioning the mind. So yesterday, looking at self-compassion, I offered a few little techniques, but one of them, just these basic self-compassion phrases in a moment of suffering to firstly just really recognize, oh, hey, this is a moment of suffering.

And then to lean into how, you know, we all go through it. It's part of being human. May I be kind to myself. And really just diving into that. This is a moment of suffering, part of being human. We all go through it. May I be kind to myself. And eventually you don't really need the words, you just kind of tap into that frequency of care. And what I find interesting, a lot of times people report this practice feels really hard or challenging.

So I wanted to unpack that a little bit today. And we can start with the classic analogy of the two arrows. The Buddha says, essentially, life continually strikes us with an arrow of suffering, illness, relational conflict, injury, financial difficulty, a health challenge, feel an unpleasant emotion, maybe just the general state of your being. You're kind of groggy, heavy, agitated. So all of these, this is suffering. Here it is, prime contender for self-compassion.

And to lean into that care for oneself amidst suffering, I described it yesterday, it's like putting aloe vera on a burn. It may not make the suffering go away, but it's soothing.

It allows our whole mind, body, nervous system to just settle a little bit. Okay, yeah, grogginess is happening. Yeah, this is a moment of suffering. Humans feel groggy sometimes. May I be kind to myself? And from that place, we also resource ourselves enough that we can take some action. well, is there something to do? Maybe I need to lay down. Maybe I need a nice meal or to go outside and take a walk, talk to someone.

Maybe it's like, well, this is just groggy. It's just going to pass through. I just got to be with it. It's hard. It doesn't feel good, but here I am.

This is how self-compassion works. But what we often do is we add more arrows of suffering. Initially, it's just to the suffering itself. So feeling groggy, heavy, feeling bad in body and mind. And then we add another arrow called resistance, an arrow called anxiety, an arrow called collapse. These are ways we have been conditioned to respond to suffering, often from our early life. And most of us have our go-to second arrows.

One of my personal favorites in my quiver is freeze, escape, numb, don't want to deal with that, shut down. And so the practice initially might be, oh, feeling groggy. This is a moment of suffering, so on and so on. And then it starts to become, oh, freezing. Oh, freezing is a moment of suffering. This too is part of being human amidst this shutdown, this wanting to get away.

I'd be kind to myself. And so this is the great trick of self-compassion as we start with the first arrow, the actual tangible suffering.

But as more arrows enter in the practice, we really fuse our mindfulness skills to be able to see those second, third, fourth, fifth, twelfth arrows. See, oh, I see you. Okay, this too is suffering. And offer that self-compassion.

And specifically when we're doing self-compassion practice, if there is this feeling that this is hard, this is really challenging or it's unpleasant, it's really helpful to get clear like, well, what exactly is hard? what is the arrow that is arising that makes this feel hard? So I wanted to name some of the common things, common arrows that arise. A lot of it is in the general category of shame, perfectionism, individualism.

One big one that comes up is, okay, so we're feeling groggy and heavy, and then, okay, this is a moment of suffering. We all go through it. May I be kind to myself? And something in us that may just come out as a kind of heavy, agitated, aversive feeling basically says something like, well, compassion means letting myself off the hook. It means not dealing with the issue.

And so then we see, oh, self-indulgence is happening or the belief of self-indulgence. Oh, that's here. Okay, yeah. Or maybe we do it and some voice comes up that says, well, I don't deserve kindness. I need to just get through this like a grown-up. not deserving mind is happening. Okay, that's here. Wow, this is suffering. To be at war with myself, to have part of me say, I don't deserve to be kind to myself.

Oh, this is painful. And you know what? I'm not the only one. This is a human thing. Can I just be kind to myself? Maybe closely related to that not deserving it belief is some sense that suffering is a kind of weakness. So to be feeling suffering is a sign that like oh I'm weak and connected to that they're like well I really should just be able to power through this like aloe vera soothing that's for wimps I need to just feel the burn and I need to apply my mega meditator skills and just see this as object of consciousness it's impersonal it's not me or even if I don't have meditator skills I want to be like that football player that played on Sunday with broken ribs.

That guy was tough. I'm the tough version of a meditator. I don't stop for no grogginess. I got this. And these are these ways like meditators co-opted, athletes co-opted, the general person in contemporary society co-ops it, like I got to power through. And so then we start to see how power through mind is happening. This is suffering. Like it's actually suffering. I'm telling myself I'm not allowed to feel at ease.

I'm not allowed to feel care. That is painful. Imagine telling a child that, like a six-year-old who hurt themselves, be like, buddy, no, no, no, you're not allowed to feel kindness and care right now. You got to get over it. It happens, but that's painful. That's suffering, being conditioned in a young one who will then, like the oak tree, grow up 30 years later a certain way.

Connected to that, this kind of individualism where we really have some cultural delusion that we're supposed to be this great strong being who can conquer everything.

That suffering is a sign of failure and I am so competent and so put together and I can handle anything. My capacity is as big as the universe. And well, it's not. Self-compassion practice to some degree involves just really seeing our fragility as humans. Like we're all going to die. we're literally going to die. And like, oh, well, I'm maybe I'm already dying. Even if I have 50 years left, like, wow, my body is pretty fragile.

It bleeds, it gets hurt, stuff gets stuck in the lungs and we cough. And so it's just bringing in a little bit of humility. Like, oh man, I don't know. This is hard being a person. Yeah, that power through mind that's here. And just raw shame is maybe one of the big ones that comes out, the mind that just comes in and says, I should be better.

I shouldn't have gotten groggy in the first place. It's all my fault. I stayed up too late. I should have been better than that. And now I'm feeling the heaviness and I should be better than this. Maybe it's not even words. It's just this contractory sinking feeling that we just get stuck in. It's like, oh, a shame is happening. This is suffering. Or maybe we don't even know what it is.

We're just sitting and we do self-compassion. We just feel bad. It's like, I don't know. Is it despair? Is it shame? Is it guilt? Is it anger? Is it sadness? I don't know. Feeling bad is happening. I'm just feeling bad. It's like, well, feeling bad is suffering. Okay, this is a moment of suffering. We all go through it. May I be kind to myself. And so in this way, the fact that self-compassion practice feels hard or challenging is not actually a sign of another failure.

It's by design. It draws out our alternate conditioning. And that's part of the intelligence of the practice is, oh, that becomes the center point of the practice. We're working not just on our first arrow, but our second, third, fourth, fifth arrow. And we find all the ways we're just so hard on ourselves. And we just collapse under the weight of shame. And we bring care to that too.

And that's how the practice really starts to blossom and flourish. And we live in that seat of care. So kind of talked over my time, but we'll go into silence here. I just invite you into that current of caring for yourself, whatever arrows may present today. We'll see you in a bit.