Self-Compassionate Living Newsletter, June 2025
“Ignorance was destroyed; knowledge arose; darkness was destroyed; light arose—as happens in one who is heedful, ardent, and resolute.”
Buddha
“…enlightenment is an accident. Practice makes us accident-prone.”
Suzuki Roshi
“We cannot attain the presence of God because we’re already in the presence of God. What’s absent is awareness.”
Richard Rohr
Thank you for subscribing to the Self-Compassionate Living Newsletter! You can cultivate self-compassion by learning and practicing it. Engaging with a supportive community usually makes it easier. You signed up to receive this monthly newsletter as part of that effort. I will endeavor to inform and inspire you, and together, we will explore ways to treat ourselves better. Thank you for inviting me to join you on your journey!
Rereading last month’s newsletter, I feel like it was a bit too much of a school lesson; it was simply concepts and some commentary. Thank you for being strong enough to bear through it. Fortunately, now that you have a basic understanding, you will comprehend a bit better some of the common ideas I’ll continue to present in these newsletters.
This month, I’m going to talk about an area of self-compassion that many of us (including me) wrestle with, and I’m going to offer you some new possibilities for navigating it. This month’s topic is patience, sorta. Read on and you’ll understand the “sorta”. My goal is to look at patience in a new way.
Patience: A Form of Acceptance
Have you ever felt impatient? Probably. Most (all) of us feel impatient at times. Generally, (if we are honest), it’s because we are not getting something we want, physically or emotionally. The impatience seems like an anger or frustration issue, and it is, on an obvious level.
If we look deeper inside our mind, though, we usually discover we feel impatient because we are not accepting some current fact of reality. This non-acceptance or non-acknowledgment of reality is the authentic root of our anger or frustration, and thus it exposes the areas in our minds to work with to be self-compassionate.
On the path to being more self-compassionate, that means that, usually and ironically, patience is a consequence of acceptance, and, as we know from previous newsletters, acceptance is a foundational part of practicing self-compassion.
Does that mean that to practice self-compassion, we must be more patient? And does more patience mean that we need to be more accepting?
No, and no.
Instead, we watch and learn.
Let’s do a minor knowledge dissection of the Survival Brain to understand.
A side note: Another foundational part of self-compassion is awareness. Thus, as an example of things we can pay attention to, please notice the survival words “must” and “need” in those two questions above. Those words are survival words, and they hint that the Survival Brain is trying to make itself feel better by forcing patience and acceptance on itself as a necessity: “must” and “need”. As a side note to the side note and some shameless promotion, in my Creating Self-Compassion class, I dedicate an entire class to Survival Language and how the Survival Brain (also covered in another whole class) uses words to try and make itself feel better. The next class is from July 3rd to August 7th, 10:30 AM to 12:00 PM MDT. Click here to learn more.
The Survival Brain-The Limbic System
The Survival Brain is a name I give to part of our brain. It’s about the size of our clenched fist, and it’s right above our spinal cord in the middle of our skull. I call it the Survival Brain because every creature on Earth has some or all of the same Survival Brain parts that we have. Neurologically, the Survival Brain is called the Limbic System. The Survival Brain’s only job is to keep us not dead, and it has three main functions to help us stay not dead.
The first function is memory retrieval. The Survival Brain is the world’s greatest search engine; in milliseconds, it can retrieve any memory we have that is somehow related to the triggering input. The second function is that the Survival Brain has no ability for logical thinking; it cannot do 2 + 2; it can remember the answer is 5, though, if we’ve learned it. (I know the answer is four; I’m just trying to bring a smile to your face.) If it hasn’t learned that the answer is four (see, I can do basic math), then it can’t add the 2 + 2 together. The third function of the Survival Brain is that it’s in charge of how we feel, emotionally. It is the boss of our emotions.
The Limbic System gets its information from our sensory organs or other thoughts our brain is processing. From that data, it can identify threats and benefits to our survival. It uses fight-flight-freeze emotions (which generally feel negative) and grab & hold emotions (which generally feel positive) to motivate us to action when it identifies a perceived threat or benefit. However, because it can’t logically process the data it receives, it reacts the same way to physical threats and benefits as it does to mental/emotional threats and benefits. In other words, thinking about a tiger attacking you activates the same fight, flight, freeze areas of the brain as a real tiger attack. It’s another part of the brain called the Frontal Cortex that stops us from acting out on a thought when no immediate physical danger is recognized.
Because of modern civilization’s protections, we have very few physical threats to deal with nowadays. However, we are bombarded with mental/emotional threats. Thus, we still feel negative emotions all the time. Those negative feelings are because the Survival Brain illogically reacts to mental/emotional threats as if they were physical threats.
The Survival Brain or Limbic System’s job is to aid us in staying not dead, and it does a good job; over eight billion of us humans are walking around the earth today. As a species, we are very much not dead.
Notice I’m not saying alive; to me, alive means living with Joy, Peace, and Contentment. That will be a topic for future newsletters, and I also discuss it in my classes.
Familiarize and Cultivate
Earlier, I mentioned “watch and learn”.
When we take time for daily stillness practice, such as meditation, centering prayer, contemplation, or self-compassionate activities, we offer ourselves focused time and space to watch our brain react to distractions. In that watching, especially when we are paying attention to how our brain reacts to distractions to our chosen focus, we notice our automatic methods for dealing with things. If we don’t like the distraction, we may see our brain yell (fight), distract itself from the negative feeling distraction (flight), or ignore the distraction (freeze). If we like the distraction, we probably see our brain get lost in thought. (grab & hold). No matter which method our brain uses, if we notice it, we will eventually see patterns in its reactions to specific triggers.
(A trigger is simply any stimulus that begins a series of thoughts, such as a distraction).
Once we become familiar with our mind’s habitual reactions to positive and negative triggers or distractions, we can intentionally decide how we want to consciously respond instead of unconsciously react. Intention is the key.
Intention: An excellent way to be self-compassionate.
Intention is a way to cultivate the responses we want, so we create our lives based on our authentic goals.
It looks like this: Let’s imagine you refuse to practice some form of stillness every day because it feels boring or worrisome. Let’s also imagine that you want to spend some time in stillness because so many teachers keep saying how good, dedicated stillness is for you. Instead of tackling twenty minutes a day upfront, which you know from experience will only last a day or two before you quit, you intentionally begin with one minute every day the first week.
You commit to doing one minute a day because you intend to be more self-compassionate.
The one minute is still really boring! It may also be a little terrifying because you’ve never spent that much time with yourself in silence before; throughout the sixty seconds, all you feel like doing is quitting. However, you intend to do it for one week before you quit, or increase the time to two minutes.
Now imagine you do it; seven days, one minute a day, consciously focusing (not just zoned out) on the birds chirping outside your window.
After seven days, you realize you’ve done it, even with all the boredom and the impatience. So, at the beginning of week two, you increase the time to two minutes. Notice, it’s still boring, and you still want it to end. Yet!... It’s not so bad because you did one minute and didn’t die; you can probably do two.
The next week, three, then four, then five, etc.
After a few weeks, your brain just does it; the impatience loses some or all of its power.
By watching your brain do all the gymnastics and not allowing the impatience to control your choices, your intention has created some control of your life.
You accept your brain wants to quit, while you also intend to complete a goal. The patience becomes the follower of acceptance, and by accepting, you also create the life you want to live.
Please consider trying it. Break down an insurmountable feeling big task into doable small tasks, accept that you don’t like the initial resistance you feel, and then accept when you find new joys in the new habits and life you are creating.
I believe in you!
Next Month
In next month’s newsletter, I’ll probably discuss Awareness again. I’ll pay attention (awareness) to the themes that arise in the biweekly discussion groups I hold (see below).
On a Personal Note
From the first newsletter last October, I have vacillated between saying "you" and saying “we”. The changes have come from several parts of my brain trying to balance several unrelated predictions about you, the audience. For example, when I say “you,” I want to make the statement personal to your experience. Simultaneously, another part of my brain feels worried I’ll come across as some kind of arrogant wise man up on the mountain (which I am not). When I say "we", I am trying to convey the sense that we are all in this together. I am learning with you. Of course, a different part of my brain feels worried I’m not speaking to you personally, and doesn’t feel it is creating the community I want.
As you can imagine, I find writing is balancing various tensions between thoughts in my brain, so please forgive me if I don't get the balance right sometimes.
If you have an insight or opinion on the "you" and the “we” discussion my brain is having, please write back and share it with me. As Ram Dass said, "We are all just walking each other home.” We are better when we help each other.
Self-Compassion Discussion & Inspiration Group
I have started a biweekly Self-Compassion Discussion & Inspiration Group. We had our first meeting last Saturday morning; four people joined me for some fantastic sharing and insight. I received notes back the next day about how meaningful the group was. Since then, I’ve had a few more people write to me asking about the next meeting. The next Self-Compassion Discussion & Inspiration Group is Saturday, June 14, from 10 AM to 11:30 AM MDT.
In the session, and after a brief introduction, we’ll do 10 minutes of stillness, and then we’ll discuss whatever comes up from the participants. I ask for a $10 to $15 donation per session; however, I will not turn anyone away for financial reasons. I have some scholarship money available.
Please join us for the next Self-Compassion Discussion & Inspiration Group meeting on Saturday, from 10 AM to 11:30 AM MDT. If you want to join us, you can click this link or go to the website and register here.
Additionally, I have decided to hold a Creating Self-Compassion class this summer. It will happen from 10:30 AM to 12:00 PM MDT from July 3rd to August 7th. Please tell your friends about it. The signup for the class is at this link: Creating Self-Compassion.
In conclusion
By this point, you've probably realized that self-compassionate living is about building a new relationship with your brain, specifically with managing your mind to create your life instead of just reacting to life. Self-compassion begins with mind management, allowing you to live with greater joy, peace, and contentment (JPC) and experience fewer negative emotions. I have learned the information I share in these newsletters; it is meant to help you practice self-compassion, so please utilize the stuff that speaks to you and discover and learn about your mind. You can create the life that you want to live.
See you next month, and may the rest of this month be peaceful.
Thank you for inviting me to walk with you.
Blair
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