The courage to be vulnerable – with Brené Brown
Dr. Brené Brown, a research professor at the University of Houston’s graduate college of social work, has spent the past decade studying vulnerability, courage, authenticity, and shame. Brené is the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Daring Greatly, and with Sounds True she has created the audio learning course The Power of Vulnerability: Teachings on Authenticity, Courage, and Connection. In this episode of Insights at the Edge, Tami speaks with Brené about the cultural myth that equates vulnerability as weakness instead of recognizing it as the greatest measure of our courage. They also examine Brené’s research about the qualities that allow a person to live in a wholehearted way.
We hope you enjoy this audio session with Brené Brown! You can stream or download the recording at no cost here – or download the transcript if you’d like to read the discussion.
Tami Simon on Spiritual Entrepreneurship
Enjoy this interview with Sounds True CEO and Founder, Tami Simon, on how she took her love of spiritual wisdom and turned it into an award-winning publishing company. Produced by our friends at The Good Life Project.
Learn more about Tami’s teaching schedule and her podcast series, Insights at the Edge here.
Embodied Awakening Practices in the Vijnana Bhairava
So often, we compartmentalize our lives, with the spiritual stuff over here and everything else over here. The more I’ve noted this tendency in myself, the more I’ve tried to bring the same open awareness to tasks such as shopping, work, and doing the dishes that I bring to reading sacred texts and meditation.
I’m always on the lookout for teachings that understand the essential unity of all existence, whether it manifests as the transcendent or the banal. When I first read a translation of the Vijnana Bhairava—one of the key texts of non-dual Kashmir Shaivism, the tradition from which Indian Buddhist Tantra evolved—I was delighted to find that its 112 dharanas, or practices, ranged from the subtle and obscure to the sensuous and embodied. In other words, its techniques for meditative awareness encompassed all of life.
Earlier this summer, I had the pleasure of working with one of my favorite Sounds True authors, Sally Kempton, to record a new program called Doorways to the Infinite: The Art and Practice of Tantric Meditation. In this program, to be released next spring, Sally explores the practices of the Vijnana Bhairaiva, unpacking the deeper meanings of the dharanas and offering guided meditation practices that evoke their unique flavors.
Each of the Vijnana Bhairava’s verses—which are presented as a conversation between the supreme lord Shiva and his consort Parvati—offers a doorway to expanded consciousness. Some are concerned with the space between breaths, the ascent of kundalini, and mantra practice—familiar subjects for spiritual practitioners. Other dharanas focus on the taste of food, on touch, on sexual ecstasy.
Still others point toward immediate realization of the Self as pure consciousness.
These dharanas prove that the ancients knew what we are rediscovering today—that spirituality is not something apart from all the other aspects of our lives. In Tantric teachings, the human body is a mirror of the cosmic body. When we have a felt sense of this unity of body and spirit, there’s no more gap between our spiritual lives and our ordinary lives. All life is spirit, and everything is our path to awakening.
Kintsugi: Filling in the Cracks of Your Life with Gold
The time has come to get started on the biggest work you will create in your life, the most important house you will ever own, the home of your soul. Let’s rebuild your life with strong materials of confidence, self-esteem, and courage. I want you to be a free and confident person, and to achieve that, we need to work hard.
Begin by getting to know yourself. You have no idea what you are like or what you are capable of achieving. During the most vulnerable years of your life, people made you believe that you weren’t capable, that you couldn’t do things, that you didn’t know how to, and that you were worthless. They ignored you, overlooked your achievements, and punished you, and all that has wreaked havoc on your self-image. Look for silence and try to reconnect with your essence. Discover yourself, and explore yourself. It’s no easy task, I know, but that’s no reason to avoid it. Observe yourself without judgment, and get to know yourself a little better each day, the same way you would with a new friend, car, or house.
Start analyzing. Stop being afraid, stop worrying, and stop running away without looking back. Forget about fear, stop reacting, and start analyzing. That is the key: to analyze instead of reacting. Life is a dynamic process, which is good news because you can grow, learn, change, and above all gain confidence.
Contextualize what happens to you without rushing in your appraisals. Now you are capable of identifying when you are carrying out partial appraisals based on fear or a negative self-image that do nothing but activate your alarm systems and generate anxiety for you. The first step toward gaining confidence is understanding, the second is detection, and the third is management. Engage in rational thinking to avoid the tunnel vision effect that a closed and imperceptive mind has tried to contaminate your soul with. Simplify reality, and eliminate the fear factor. I propose an exercise of imagination. Imagine you are at a meeting expounding your point of view on a project, and that suddenly your boss takes out a piece of paper and starts taking notes. You don’t actually know what they are writing, but if you feel afraid, you will believe they are taking notes on the things they didn’t like, when you don’t really know. Perhaps they loved it. Or perhaps they have simply remembered a task they still have to do. So when you don’t know something for sure, don’t rule out any of the options, either negative or positive. This, precisely, is what tunnel vision consists of.
You have many more virtues than the ones you imagine, and you are capable of many more things than you may believe.
Learn more about this powerful practice of healing trauma in Kintsugi: The Japanese Art of Embracing the Imperfect and Loving Your Flaws by Tomás Navarro.
Tomás Navarro is a psychologist who loves people and what they feel, think, and do. He is the founder of a consultancy practice and center for emotional well-being. He currently splits his time between technical writing, training, consultancy, conferences and advisory processes, and personal and professional coaching. He lives in Gerona and Barcelona, Spain.
Read Kintsugi today!
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Brené Brown with Oprah on Super Soul Sunday, September 15th
Daring Greatly: Why Vulnerability is Your Greatest Stregth
Sounds True author and friend Brené Brown will appear on Super Soul Sunday this weekend with Oprah to discuss the healing and transformative power of opening to vulnerability. The common cultural wisdom tells us that vulnerability is a weakness, but is this really true? What Brené has discovered is that it is not possible to have courage in our lives unless we first open to vulnerability. We invite you to join this special two-hour interview with Brené and Oprah to find out why sharing your feelings – and having hard conversations – is the only way to dare greatly in life.
Tune in here! http://bit.ly/17RJ8xH
Learn more about Brené’s audio learning programs here:
The Power of Vulnerability – http://bit.ly/TlisvN
Men, Women, & Worthiness – http://bit.ly/12r5W51
The Gifts of Imperfect Parenting – http://bit.ly/13YlNNe
Taking the Small Stuff in Stride
Especially during the holidays, it’s helpful to have a good perspective and take things in stride. Here, Lama Surya Das shares some of his favorite remindfulness practices for keeping the big picture in focus:
My own practice for not sweating the small stuff entails utilizing a few homemade quotes and potent slogans that speak to me. I keep yellow sticky notes and index cards on my desk, bathroom mirror, dashboard, wallet, and computer. I practice what I call remindfulness by remembering to look at these handwritten adages; they help me recall what is important in the bigger picture and in the long run — my values, principles, vows, practices, and goals. I let the wisdom of these maxims sink in, inevitably defusing the situation before it gets anywhere near out of hand.
Among these potent pointers, here are my favorite:
- “This too shall pass.”
- This slogan reminds me to practice patience, acceptance, and forbearance in the face of irritation and disappointment. I also remember to stay in touch with the long view, because things are cyclic and nothing happens without causes, even if not immediately apparent to me.
- “How much will this matter to me a year or two from now?”
- I also like to echo the Diamond Sutra, the world’s oldest printed book, which quotes Buddha saying: “See things as like a dream, a fantasy, a mirage.”
- I usually add the word sitcom or movie, just for fun. This traditional Dharma teaching helps me remember to regard everything as like rainbows or the divine dance of illusion. It helps me take things a lot less seriously and leave room for my inner child and little Buddha within to stand up, play, dance, and sing.
Probably the most effective, practical yoga and meditation-related maxim is this:
- “Breathe, relax, center, and smile. Nothing is as important as it seems at this moment.”
- That really cools my jets, and allows for more intelligent decision-making and clear-headed thinking to proceed.
I’ve gotten my friend Amelia into the habit of singing (often in her head) the great nursery-rhyme mantra guaranteed to defuse any difficult situation:
- “Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream. Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream.”
If I have a good amount of time and feel inspired to co-meditate with the Masters for further spiritual relief and sustenance — perhaps when I’m sitting in a waiting room at the airport or somewhere — I either close my eyes and chant Tibetan mantras and prayers to myself, so only my collar can hear it (as Dudjom Rinpoche once advised), or I recite Buddha’s Metta Sutra (Maitri or Loving- Kindness Sermon) which includes the line:
- “May all beings be happy and at ease!”
Or I might take St. Francis of Assisi’s Peace Prayer out of my wallet and read:
- “Make me an instrument of your peace . . .”
I invite you to try my small-stuff slogans out, one at a time, and see how they work for you. Or find other one-liners and make up your own.
Looking for more great reads?
Excerpted from Make Me One with Everything by Lama Surya Das
Lama Surya Das is one of the most learned and highly trained American-born lamas in the Tibetan Dzogchen tradition. He is the founder of the Dzogchen Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts and Austin, Texas, and the author of many books, including Awakening the Buddha Within. For more, visit surya.org.
