Quotes from the book "Radical Compassion"

This is one of those great books by Tara Barch. You may not be able to connect to it completely but you know you need this.

In this book, she discusses RAIN (Recognize, Allow, Investigate, and Nurture (non-identification)).

• RAIN can interrupt the cutoff state I call "Living in a trance".
• Do not try to save the whole world or do anything grandiose. Instead, create a clearing in the dense forest of your life.

Trance	Presence
Unconscious-below the line	Conscious-above the line
Asleep, in a dream	Wakeful, lucid, aware
Caught or possessed by emotions	Emotions witnessed mindfully
Dissociated	In contact with feelings
Heart-defended or numb	Heart-caring and tender
Reactive to experiences	Responsive to experiences
Grasping or resisting	Balanced, open, and discerning

• Whenever that trance of emotions appears acknowledge like Buddha by saying "I see you, Mara... Let's have tea"
• Neuroplasticity: Neurons that fire together, wire together
• While allowing doesn't necessarily reduce unpleasantness, it radically shifts our relationship to pain in a way that reduces suffering. Imagine the difference between pouring a cup of dye into a sink full of water and pouring the same amount into a lake.
• Whenever you find yourself lost or confused these questions can help you step back on the path
• What is happening inside me? R - Recognize
• Can I be with this? A - Allow
• What is really happening inside me? I - Investigate
• Can I be with this ... with kindness? N - Nurture
• We speak about losing our minds as if it is a bad thing. I say, lose your mind. Do it purposefully. Find out who you really are beyond your thoughts and beliefs.
• Our issues are in our tissues
• We remember painful events much more readily than pleasant ones.
• The brain is Velcro for negative experiences, but Teflon for positive ones.
• Wisdom tells me I am nothing. Love tells me I am everything. And between the two my life flows.
• You are more than this addiction/pain/suffering... trust your caring heart.
• Can we expand your window of tolerance (or what psychologists call your degree of affect tolerance) by doing the inner work of RAIN.
• Our survival brain is geared to remember painful experiences more readily than pleasant ones; this is our negativity bias.
• Whatever you practice grows stronger. Learning how to turn positive states into lasting traits is one of the greatest gifts you can give to yourself.
• There are 3 primary pathways for increasing inner safety through meditation: attention to body and breath; wise and loving messages; and mentally evoking a person, place activity, or memory.
• Men are only free when they are doing what their deepest selves like. And there is getting down to the deepest self! it takes some diving.
• If you want to find the meaning, stop chasing after so many things.
• Investigate the effect of the "if only" mind: How does it shape your thoughts and your mood.
• You can be content right where you are.
• I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hate so stubbornly is because they sense, that once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with the pain.
• Anger is not transformative, it is initiatory, It's an energy we need to use wisely.
• Ask yourself these questions: "How regularly am I triggered"? "When I'm blaming someone, does it take over my whole experience of them?"
• I can make myself a victim by blaming someone else, or I can heal and empower myself.
• Vengeance is a lazy form of grief
• When we behave in hurtful ways, it is because we are caught in some kind of painful trap.
• If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.
• Anger is a signal. It energizes us to take care.
• In the Babemba tribe of South Africa, when a person acts irresponsibly or unjustly, he is placed in the center of the village, alone and unfettered. All work ceases, and every man, woman, and child in the village gathers in a large circle around the accused individual. Then each person in the tribe speaks to the accused, one at a time, about all the good things the person in the center of the circle has done in his lifetime.
• You cannot love what you cannot see afresh. You cannot love what you are not constantly discovering anew.
• We are conditioned to limit our attentiveness to a select few
• you might think of your true self as an ocean that has changing waves on the surface. If you know you're the ocean, you're not afraid of the waves.
• Empathy is our capacity to feel the emotions of others and/or take the perspective of other people.
• The four Remembrances:
• Pause for presence
• Say Yes to what's here
• Turn toward love
• Rest in awareness
• Especially when strong emotions like fear, shame, and anger are running the show we'll do almost anything rather than be right here feeling our raw and unpleasant feelings. When we're caught in our reactive trance, it's as though we are on a bicycle pedaling away from the present moment, and the more stressed we feel, the faster we pedal.

Happy Reading !!!