Session 3: Wake up to the Fullness of Life
Awake in Every Moment
With Pema Chödrön
Session Three: Wake up to the Fullness of Life
Group Discussion
Bring to mind a mildly unpleasant experience. What gift might it offer you, in terms of your awakening?
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Wonderful talks! It was a shame the online courses is already closed 🙁
I found all the presentations very helpful,
in their simple, direct approach.
I do not have speakers on my desktop computer, so was unable to hear the messages.
Can these 3 awareness messages be sent for reading online?
I love Pema,she explains life and its terms simply,thank goodness,cause my monkey mind needs and wants to digest slowly
I love these short talks. Sometimes too much information clouds and diverts the thiking. I am very thankful for these to the point information giving talks.
I had a very bad gall bladder attack & went to emergency. While there they took all kinds of tests . A doctor came by while I was lying on a bed in the hall to tell me I had diabetes! No! I said… I don’t have diabetes!
You certainly do!…. he replied. The diagnosis of having Diabetes has been one of the greatest gifts ever!!
I’ve lost the 30lbs that I’d been “trying” to lose,! I eat really well now, have my neighbors exercising with me & I feel like a million $$$$! From bad came such good!
I’m actually very grateful for my diabetes!!
Go figure👍!
I felt like you were speaking to me…I’ve been in a slump…I usually try to accept challenges with optimism but haven’t been practicing lately…Crying and feeling blue…Today I am looking at these challenges with a different lens..Thank you for being there. I’m dealing with a medical issue at a late age…It’s people like you who surely lift us up.
Thank you, Pema, for these three days of insight. I have (on a good day) become the observer in my life and can appreciate the challenges as opportunities. Little by little I am coming into balance – letting go of codependency and allowing others to learn and grow and change through adversity as well. Changing is uncomfortable but having changed is freeing!
You are one of my great teachers. I have read several of your books and articles, been to Omega. But I have not met you personally. Thank you today for these three sessions. They remind me to try to live a life in balance. Namaste.
Thank you for these so great and so simple teachings that go to the heart. I love the comment between glorious and difficult states of mind. I usually fall back into the belief that only glorious moments happen, but in fact, hard times teach us more and are more fruitful! Thank you so much.
It is funny how awareness is ageless. In my later beginnings and phase of life, I am so appreciative and excited about the awareness I am offered and experiencing. Thank you for continuing to share what you have gained. Much joy to you.
Blessings dear Teacher and yor Teacher for being so clear about impermanence
Blessings
Thank you so much for sharing this with us. I have felt accepted, encouraged, loved and inspired by your voice and your words.
Just being in(asking( the question begins to shift things, even if just a little, for me. As always, I’m grateful for Pema’s teachings and for this community of truth seekers. Love to all of you.
Great insights.
I listened to offerings 1 and 2 several times.
This is coming at the right time.
Happy Valentine’s Day week to all.
Jo
Great teaching
Merci pour ces enseignements
Merci infiniment pour ces enseignements 🙏
Thank you great blessings and wisdom. Comfort
Thank you.
I really could relate to this And it’s true when you are a long time practitioner adversity becomes an opportunity. I experienced what Pema was talking about most strongly when I had my injury which left me paralysed meditation helped me in reaching the following realisation. It all happened while I was on a hospital bed not knowing what’s gonna happen from now on because I was paralysed:
“The past is past; it is gone, cherish the experience, learn from it; keep reliving it, and you will be stuck in it while your life passes by. The future is illusionary. The only thing you have is the “unfathomable” present moment, which is beyond time and space, in which you experience eternity and what has been termed “the kingdom of heaven” and “nirvana”.
– by Clayton Micallef
This was so revealing to me, so much so, that if somebody would give me the opportunity to turn back the clock of time and stop that event that made me paralysed I would actually say no let it happen because such adversity I think I came to understand the true meaning of life. A question so hard to answer that it can lead one into an exhausting endless search while life passes by. Stop searching start living and meaning will start creeping into life 😉
Wow! Amazing attitude.
Beautiful.
Thank you. I will hold your story and allow it to inspire, honour it to build courage and compassion.
Indeed! I can say the same for myself: the event which seemed unfathomable and most unjust opened the door to acceptance and the freedom this brought. What seemed like the thing I needed to fight and “make just” turned out to be the great gift of recognising that action is very different from re-action. I cannot say that I reached the point of welcoming the unpleasant but I am now looking for the “door of opportunity” which turns me away from re-activity.
Thank you so much from Italy. Life is a “wonderful adventure” (said my father): pain and joy, comfortable and uncomfortable
I liked Pema’s distinction between the comfort zone and the learning zone. I also appreciated her explanation of alternation. I find Pema’s teachings to be so accessible, so easy to understand. Right now I’m in a mildly uncomfortable situation. I am not really feeling well yet I promised someone that I would do something for her that is due on Sunday. I’m going to go to her office to be of assistance but I wish that I could just stay home. I’m unable to say that I can’t come because of my promise and the deadline. What learning is here for me right now?
You are able to say you cannot come. You are making a choice to fulfill your promise because of—what? What is it that compels you to fulfill this promise in spite of your feelings? How can you embrace and own that choice so that you are taking responsibility for your actions completely? How does that alter the way you interact with yourself and your commitment? How does it feel to breathe through these feelings to which you seem to have assigned unpleasantness? Is this situation truly unpleasant or are you interpreting it as such?
Hi, yes I also like the distinction between comfort (or discomfort) and learning. I am helping my daughter with something whereas I’d rather be doing something I want to do for myself . Rather than spending the day being miserable, wishing I was somewhere else, I first accepted it, then applied the mind to each moment and hey……I enjoyed helping my daughter. It was wallpapering by the way.
thank you
Thank you Pena so very much for these 3 mini peeks at the full course of study. I have, for some time now been studying the notion of contrast and how instructive it has been for me. Learning alternation the high and the low; good and not so good provides us with contrast. I used this very concept to help provide my husband almost 10 years ago now to have the space of ease and me the alternation of contrast to help us both be compassionate and equitable in his dying process. So instructive and filled with rich awareness and understanding for us both. Thank you 🙏
I do not have a web site. My FB business page is Yoga with Balance
I am excited to see how much I awaken from learning to live gracefully with my husband who has been diagnosed with early onset dementia. Thank you for reaffirming the pain if not for nothing.
Dear Ani Pema,
Thank you for your precious teachings. I can apply them to my practice and I do. . But what about mental health problems? How your teachings can apply to those persons? They need medication and it is often difficult to find the appropriate ones. It seems to me an endless suffering. How can we/they find hope and comfort?
I am happy to have had 3 days of video teaching. The part that sticks with me from video #3 is comfort zone versus learning zone … also starting to get a little excitement about dealing with adversities such as computer problems. Thank you so much.
Brilliant mini course, very pith and practical antidotes, easy to relate to and apply whenever the need arises. A mini course but somehow complete and comprehensive. Thanks to all for producing the course and reaching out to many.
I had a significant meet up with a new friend I had been sharing deeply via emails. Today was the ultimate expression of much that we had been sharing without actually meeting. This meet up seemed like a new beginning. Though it turned out to be a glorious sharing and we both were thankful for this day, it turned out this is all there is to be. I accepted this yet hoped for more at a future date. It was a few hours later I was given a gift of some handmade greeting cards. In one of them was this saying, “Remember that sometimes not getting what you want in a wonderful stroke of luck.” I read it again and again fully aware of the truth of it yet I also knew I was dealing wtih my own disappointment for what wasn’t going to continue. It seemed as though the Universe was re-directing my thoughts to “what’s next”. And not to what couldn’t be. Gifts come in all shapes, sizes and conundrums.
I loved this, Dona! It gave me another way of looking at imperfect things that happen in my life. Thank you for sharing your experience.
Regarding Pema Chodron’s talk. I always love any talk Pema gives. So encouraging and uplifting! So needed right now.
Pema Chödrön sheds such light on everyday life showing the simple opportunities and how to take them for growth. She helps me to see clearly and explains how to move in each day more easily. Thank you dear Pema.
Ani Pema’s introduction of Shenpa many years ago became my primary practice. Friends unfamiliar with it thought me a bit perverse in seeing the emotional pinch and pain of shenps’s hook as an opportunity. Just yesterday in relating a very difficult situation to a friend she asked how I felt about it and I said it was another :Well, lookie here” situation”. The light heartedness of my response immediately took me out of the pain of the situation and also showed me how deeply I had integrated the gift of the awareness of shenpa into my life.
I so appreciate this platform to be able to thank Pema for this teaching that has been such a gift to me and one that ironically brings possibly even more joy eventually than the joyful ones! Blessings and so much appreciation.
Just love the ‘light heartedness’ of your response, “Well, lookie here” in accepting the challenges that inevitably arise in everyone’s life.
So humble, so open, so wise. I’m shamelessly (!) appropriating your response as my go-to when those pinches come, to go deeper. Thank you.
Thank you so much for the insights!
as a psychotherapist of 60 years in practice. I so relate to this. How much we learn from both pain and joy. Life is full of both. It is so good to hear this teaching.. I think we learn as much from joy as from pain. Both are impermanent and both are great teacher. I thanks you and respect how long and hard you have worked to gain wisdom.