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May I have the teaching?” The Zen master invited him to sit and offered him tea The scientist held out his cup as the Zen master began to fill it and continued pouring as the tea spilled over onto the floor. Looking up at the Zen master, he said, “This is no good. My cup is too full.” And the Zen master, smiling, replied, “That is right. Like this cup, your mind is too full. Empty your cup and then come back for the teaching. Perhaps then you will have room to receive the truth.”

 

"Our cups are so full, we know so much, that we understand nothing. We are all so together! In fact, we are altogether too together. And we notice that there is a pain in our heart because of this. Our togetherness is our false knowing. A very expensive trade-off for the freedom inherent in being.
It is in letting go of old models, opening into “don’t know,” that we discover life."

 

"We experience the melting away of old knowings and expectations. We begin to experience the joy of simply being, in love with all that is.
When we no longer cling to our knowing, but simply open to the truth of each moment as it is, life goes beyond heaven and hell, beyond the mind’s constant angling for satisfaction."

So much space for discovery. So little holding to old confusion, to old mirages of comfort and safety. Focusing on the natural openness of the heart, we begin to see that there’s nothing to push away, nothing to be, nowhere to go. That we are infinitely undefined. We have been so busy being “someone” for so long that we don’t know who we are or who/what we really might be. Letting go of our knowing, we open into being itself. We experience the deathless Our fear of death and our longing for life merge in being; heaven and hell are resolved in the moment. The richness, the suchness of life becomes evident. Nothing to protect, nothing to hide. Just a renewed vitality and openness to life.
Don Juan leans back in his chair and smiles at Carlos, “The basic difference between an ordinary person and a warrior is that a warrior takes everything as a challenge whereas an ordinary person takes everything as a blessing or a curse.”

The warrior has the wisdom to approach each event as it is, not knowing its outcome. Not forcing results. His “don’t know” is the joy and courage that fill his life.

"You wish to reach out to tell them something, to finish your business, to say good-by, to cut through years of partial communication.
What would you say? Think of what has remained unsaid and share that each day with those you love Don’t hesitate. Tomorrow is just a dream.
Finishing business does not necessarily mean you clear up all the particulars of a lifetime of incomplete trust and fractured communication. Many think of finishing business as a totaling of accounts, coming to bottom-line-zero, balancing out the predicaments of the past in a long talking through of events. In my experience there is often not enough time or trust or self-confidence or simply not enough energy to deal with such old holdings and resentments, fears, and doubts.
Finishing business means that I open my heart to you, that whatever blocks my heart with resentment or fear, that whatever I still want from you, is let go of and I just send love. I let go of what obstructs our deepest sharing. That I open to you as you are in love. Not as I wish you to be or as I wish me to be. An opening into the oneness beyond the need to settle accounts. No longer looking to be forgiven or to show others how unfair they were. To finish our business, we must begin to stop holding back. Gradually love replaces clinging. As we begin to open past our image of some separate “me” in relationship to some separate “other” and just be there with ourselves in soft openness, our business is finished."

 

"On several occasions, people have shared that they would like to have been able to finish business with someone who has since died. They wish they could have communicated the love, the connection between them, but now they feel it’s too late. Often this recognition of the incompleteness of relationship leads one to identify with feelings of helplessness and guilt. And we are asked, How do you finish business with someone who is no longer around? Of course the answer is always the same—one need not see that person to send them love. To finish business the other doesn’t even need to acknowledge your presence, much less the process you are sharing. It is our work to open in love to another. This work is independent of results. It is done of its own and for its own sake."

 

 

Speaking from the heart and listening from the stillness beyond the rational mind, they communicate that which they feel still separates them And even though the passing of that loved one may have been twenty years before, many speak of a new clearing, a new openness between them. The gulf that they felt separated them for years has dissolved in love. Often, just ten or twenty minutes of such communication allows the separateness of years to fall away and only their essential contact remains. Indeed, this finishing of old business once again reminds one that when two people are pulling on either end of a rope, it takes only one of them to let go of his end to release all of the tension between them."

 

"What usually blocks forgiveness is pride and resentment. When resentment arises, we usually dive right into it. We lose our space. We identify with it and, instead of recognizing resentment as simply the frustration of old desires and old holdings, we close. But resentment can be used as an object of investigation. Allowing that state of mind to be there without judgment or fear allows the heart to open and we find ourselves not loving out of separateness and duality, but simply “in love” with another.

 

 

"you deliberately choose to feel the hurt you have experienced for a shorter period. You know from experience that your negative feelings will pass. Instead of dwelling on your anger, you realize that your feelings contain truths about your life. Your feelings are trying to tell you that some action is necessary to heal yourself or your relationship."

 

"You also realize that there is only a certain amount of space in your mind. You can choose to use that space to dwell in anger or to work at repairing the relationship and eventually letting go of the problematic situation. Instead of using that space to grieve and feel anger, you use that space to work on a solution."

 

"As a forgiving person, you become resistant to taking offense even when, for instance, your wife spends too much time with the children and not enough with you. Your skin becomes tougher. You take less personal offense. You take responsibility for your own feelings, and you talk about your relationships in ways that focus on good intentions, both your own and those of the people in your life."

 

"I want to waste as little of my life as possible in the pain caused by anger and hurt."

 

"Love comes with positive and negative experiences. I can’t expect to have only good things come my way. Instead, I hope for the good and know I can forgive the bad.I am not perfect. How can I expect my partner to be?Dealing with relationships is a challenge. I want to be a survivor and not a victim. Each hurtful situation challenges my determination to live as fully and lovingly as possible. I accept the challenges that life sends my way.Love is filled with beauty and wonder. I am missing these experiences if I am constantly replaying old offenses in my head. I forgive myself for letting my grudges temporarily sidetrack me from appreciating life.  My husband/wife does the best he/she can. When he/she makes a mistake, the best way to help is by offering understanding. The first step in this process is to forgive whatever he/she did that was wrong."

 

"I understand that everyone, myself included, operates primarily out of self-interest. I expect that sometimes I, in my self-interest, will be hurt by my lover’s own expression of self-interest. When I understand that this is an ordinary part of life, what is there to be upset about? When I grasp that self-interest is my guiding principle, how can I not offer forgiveness to both my partner and myself for behaving that way?"

 

"When you expect and allow people to be different, it becomes much easier for you to forgive them. Forgiving allows you to understand that what is right for you will not be right for everybody."

 

"Sometimes a grievance is the result of someone’s deliberate attempt to wound us. Often that person justifies wounding us as a response to a hurt we have inflicted on them."

 

"you understand that other people are going to be watching different movies and having life experiences different from yours.You need to be able to talk to your partner even when he or she has watched a different movie from yours. It’s tempting to simply criticize each other for going to different films, but you both need to make the effort to try to understand the story line and perspective of the other’s movie'

 

"When you and your partner watch and review each other’s film, you show each other that you care and you avoid creating a grudge based in your different takes on life."

 

"a sign that you have figured out that you have power over your feelings and that conflict is inevitable in any kind of relationship."

 

"stories of heroic understanding and unruffled self-acceptance "

"What I don’t hear very often is any acknowledgment of informed consent—the admission that they made a choice and therefore assumed the risks. Something like: “I knew there would be things that would go wrong but chose to go ahead anyway.”"

 

"The flip side to all of this is sometimes fantastic: choosing to take on the risks of a relationship might also show you that your partner is even better than you could have imagined. The trying situations that destroy some relationships could strengthen yours."

 

"When you add your flaws to those of your partner, you start to realize just how challenging it can be to get along. It is human nature to focus on your partner’s mistakes and flaws and minimize your own.

 

"Betty gave Gordon a huge amount of power over her by holding him responsible for her feelings. Because she was feeling hurt, she got upset every time she thought about Gordon’s lack of caring. This thinking led her to feel like the victim of someone who was more powerful than she was."

 

By blaming our body’s normal protective stress response on the person who has hurt us, we make ourselves feel small and weak compared to their perceived power. Gordon also suffered: his futile anger made him feel helpless and disempowered. Gordon could have ended this futile cycle if he had understood the power of forgiveness.

Uncovering the unenforceable rule is the fourth step in the process, and it is much easier than you may think. The unenforceable rule is simply the desire or hope you have for something good that you have turned into an expectation or demand."

 

Try substituting the words “hope” or “wish” for “must” or “have to” in your unenforceable expectation or demand."

 

Challenging your unenforceable rules lets you take responsibility for your feelings and helps you take your partner’s quirks less personally. You become aware that much of what you took personally about your partner’s behavior was only rules you could not enforce. You remember that you love your partner, not the things you are demanding from him or her. Once you do this, you can see that your thinking played a significant role in the anger and hurt that you felt. As you challenge your rules, you will see that clearer thinking leads to more peaceful coexistence in your marriage and day-to-day life.

Love suffers when we focus on our partners’ difficult traits and problematic behaviors to the exclusion of their beauty and goodness. We accentuate our painful experiences when we focus our attention on difficult traits. By focusing on what is wrong, we immediately put stress into our bodies and minds. By taking our partners’ good qualities for granted and focusing on their errors and flaws, we create more stress in our lives and relationship. That stress contributes to disordered thinking and disturbed relationships. As a result, we miss the enormous number of good and loving choices our partners make every day. What brings love to our relationship and sows the seeds for forgiveness is simple: appreciating absolutely everything we can about the person we are with each and every day. There is nothing simpler to do, and no more powerful gift you can offer to your partner."

 

"Our vulnerability to our lovers’ whims makes forgiving them hard, and that is what makes relationships so difficult."

 

"Once we have been hurt, we fear that they could hurt us again. We worry that they might not change for the better and could even change for the worse."

The best thing we can do is to use our power to appreciate our lovers so that we have many reasons to forgive them their trespasses and flaws. You can dramatically improve your chances for success in your relationship if you simply give thanks for being loved numerous times each day. Try to notice the little things your lover does every day to make the relationship work. Be thankful for every day he or she tolerates you with all your quirks and wounds. You want to see your partner’s goodness and forgiveness and honor the effort he or she makes to care for you. Try to notice your lover’s strengths and good points and kind actions as often as possible. Tell your lover how lucky you are that he or she chose you for a partner and continues to choose you every single day.

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Stress causes your body to tighten up and your brain to constrict; positive emotions like forgiveness and gratitude have the opposite effect. The blood that drains away from the thinking part of your brain when you are stressed returns when you feel grateful or forgiving."

 

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"When we forgive our partners, we see more than just the harm they may have done. Not that they are blameless or perfect. But when we forgive them, we can see them fully enough to lose the need to punish them for their failures. When we forgive them, we appreciate their goodness so much that we can have the necessary yet difficult conversations without bitterness. Research has shown that two partners remember the negatives in their relationship more than the positives and that most couples need to have around five positive experiences for each negative one in order for the relationship to work. Appreciating our partners’ good qualities is a great way to rebalance a marriage that has too much anger and stress, and it’s something we can easily do many times a day to balance out negativity. We offer our partners a great gift by acknowledging the good they do and all they bring to our lives."

 

"Your ability to forgive grows stronger when you accept the gifts of love your partner offers. At the very least this means accepting that your relationship will not last forever. This also means that you should glorify any and all experiences you have of love. One way to do this is to understand that love is a precious gift and to be grateful for the fact that you were given it, even if it did not last. One of the tragedies I see in my work is people discounting past love because it did not last. They are unable to take joy in the love they shared because that love ended. I have had numerous people tell me that their marriage of twenty years was a sham because after fifteen years their partner had an affair. Their pain was understandable, but it minimized the fact that the love in their lives was majestic and a blessing no matter how long it lasted.

"you should be generous with your praise and notice your partner’s bad qualities without getting lost in them."

 

"By appreciating the contribution our lovers make, we acknowledge that their lives have meaning and are important. Try to look for all the different successes your lover has achieved at work and at home."

 

". The common tendency is to feel that your experience of hurt is more real than your ability to love. It is important to challenge this belief and also to challenge the very human tendency to say that the painful experiences your spouse caused go deeper than the love you feel for them. The pain you feel will diminish in importance when you bring more positive experiences into your relationship."

 

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Any relationship will have difficult aspects that do not go away, no matter how much we dislike them, and painful memories from the past that do not change, no matter how much we want them to."

 

"a continual recommitment to your relationship. Forgiveness comes after grieving your losses, and it allows you to move forward in your relationship with happiness and a positive attitude."

 

"You have to recommit when your lover is late yet again, or leaves a cheap tip for the third time in a week. If your partner does something annoying but ultimately insignificant, acknowledge your dismay or loss for an instant and then connect right back again. Try saying something to help put the annoyance in perspective and get back in the game. You could remind yourself that “she’s worth it,” or “it was no big deal.” Most of the time you don’t even need to let your lover know he or she has done anything wrong."

 

"Like Larry, you may think you should have taken action long ago. Larry’s continued anger at himself did not help him take constructive action. The truth is that Larry was not able to stop his father until he was ready"

 

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