Is everybody in? @mercurystained - Tumblr Blog

earth-and-skin

There are so many fruits you haven’t tasted

so many beautiful songs you have not discovered

spices you’ve never heard of

and intriguing conversations you haven’t had

there are oceans you have not felt

and plants you’ve never seen

books you’ve never read

and souls your heart has not touched

this Earth is incredible.

thunder

via weheartit

osakaxkobe

lazyyogi

I have low self esteem and it is affects my relationships. It has nothing to do with my body, I’m insecure about my personality and my worthiness of love. I’m extremely defensive and can’t take much joking or criticism. Do you have any advice???

Self-esteem is the quality we create when we use self-images to motivate us.

We identify with something like body, personality, title, name, or emotions, and then we live and die by that thing. If we judge that thing as good, we feel good and say we have high self-esteem. And if we judge that thing as bad or horrible then we feel terrible about ourselves and say we have low self-esteem.

Rather than try to win this game, free yourself from it. There are two parts to this: identification and judgment. You identify with a phenomenon, then you judge it, then you experience the energy of that judgment.

So, first step: stop judging. Because you are scrutinizing your personality, you are creating solidified judgments about something that is by nature changeful and ephemeral. This manifests as insecurity. The people who are free from this insecurity aren’t “secure” about their personality but rather they intuit the way our personality is like a mask we wear. It isn’t meant to be us but it is a way we can choose to express ourselves. There’s no point in judging it or blaming it. Play with it.

The second step naturally follows from this: withdraw identification from things that are not you. Just as you shouldn’t judge the mask you wear, you shouldn’t identify and take yourself to be that mask.

Obviously these are things you work on over time. Sometimes change is instant and sometimes it is gradual. But it is inevitable when you apply your effort.

Lastly, no one is worthy of love. We are made of love. And when we give love, we share something of our divine nature. That is what makes it such a gift to give.

Discovering your nature as love, learning to cease identifying with false selves, and suspension of judgment are important endeavors if we are to life happily and wisely in this world. Daily meditation will help to make all this talk an experienced reality for you.

A book I often recommend is The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle. Definitely give it a read and you may find quite a few ways to free yourself.

Namaste :)

purplebuddhaproject

“I was born very far from where I’m supposed to be, and so I’m on my way home.”

— Bob Dylan (via purplebuddhaquotes)

Weird

“Even in the darkest night, if you strike a match, the shadows will flee. This is a law of nature; the darkness yields to the light, no matter how small the flame.”

— Jared White (via purplebuddhaquotes)