Joko Beck Quotes

Neither blame or praise yourself.

Meditation practice is a way of making friends with ourselves. Whether we are worthy or unworthy, that's not the point. It's developing a friendly attitude to ourselves, accepting the hidden neurosis coming through.

Meditation means: put the mind aside and watch. The first step - LOVE YOURSELF - will help you tremendously. By loving yourself you will have destroyed much that society has implanted within you. You will have become freer from the society and its conditioning.

Accept what you cannot control.

It took me a while to learn the true meaning of patience and surrender, but I have finally accepted that healing doesn't happen on our schedule. It doesn't have a clock or a calendar.

So the best thing is to really work on yourself and opening your own heart and just letting all that stuff [worrying] go. And it is possible. It's sometimes takes a lot of time; it's not easy. And a lot of sitting with yourself and trying to work with your own heart.

Peace of mind comes from not wanting to change other, but by simply accepting them as they are. True acceptance is always without demands and expectations.

It is only when we begin to relax with ourselves that meditation becomes a transformative process. Only when we relate with ourselves without moralizing, without harshness, without deception, can we let go of harmful patterns. Without maitri (metta), renunciation of old habits becomes abusive. This is an important point.

When we practice metta, we open continuously to the truth of our actual experience, changing our relationship to life.

In deep self-acceptance grows a compassionate understanding. As one Zen master said when I asked if he ever gets angry, 'Of course I get angry, but then a few minutes later I say to myself, 'What's the use of this,' and I let it go.'

It is not worth the while to let our imperfections disturb us always. The conscience really does not, and ought not to monopolizethe whole of our lives, any more than the heart or the head. It is as liable to disease as any other part.

Enlightenment does not ask you to be perfect; it simply asks you to find perfection right where you stand.

Your best changes from moment to moment, sick or well, tired or rested. Remember that you are an imperfect human being. There is no value to judging yourself for

You have to be content with who you are on a day-to-day basis.

the important consideration is not your opponents, but yourself. It is bad to scream at them, not because it hurts them, they ought to be hurt, but because it hurts you. Anger is a form of recognition. It amounts to admitting that those people are important to you and that they have the power to hurt you. Actually, they haven't.

You're not going to be perfect, you're not going to stop berating yourself, you're not going to stop the comparisons, you're not going to stop the judgment, but you can become evermore mindful of it, and that has to be good enough.

It is what it is. You are what you it. There are no mistakes.

I accept myself unconditionally right now

See if you can give yourself gifts that may be true blessings, such as self-acceptance , or some time each day with no purpose. Practice feeling deserving enough to accept these gifts without obligation - to simply receive from yourself, and from the universe.

Much of spiritual life is self-acceptance, maybe all of it.

Meditation practice isn't about trying to throw ourselves away and become something better. It's about befriending who we are already.

If you want to understand yourself, Then do not examine yourself. Just love yourself more sincerely, More soulfully And more self-givingly.

I've learned to take things a little more easily, to be a little more forgiving of myself.

I was really involved with other people's opinions of me, and it got heightened during my film career. I don't have any opinion, good or bad about it, it just was. It's not the way I feel now, and I think yoga has a lot to do with that.

It is so powerful when we can leave behind our ordinary identities, no longer think of ourselves primarily as a conductor, or writer, or salesclerk, and go to a supportive environment to deeply immerse in meditation practice.