Slogan #52

Don't misinterpret.

Each Lojong slogan is a call to action and today, there are six misinterpretations that we’re likely to encounter along the way. Liberation is essentially the ability to see where we’re stuck, to weaken the grip of the need to personalize or to concretize, and to ultimately escape our habitual chains of suffering. I’ve reinterpreted the traditional six prohibitions into six aspirations for practice. Mind training provides us with an accessible and actionable road map that unlocks our deepest potential for patience, wisdom, clarity, compassion, harmony, and generosity.

These are foundational practices for paradigm shifts on what is important and what constitutes a life worth living. Writer Adam Grant coined the phrase “well-doing” as opposed to well-being; that to live in this world with integrity involves walking our talk. What are the qualities that develop from committed practice? As we move through the developmental stages of learning from unconscious incompetence to conscious incompetence to conscious competence to unconscious competence, we develop awareness, acceptance, concentration, contentment, creativity, and resiliency. We are learning to uphold both truth and tenderness, courage and compassion, and presence and patience. We are learning to be more vulnerable and less confident, to be more accountable and less entitled, to choose calm over chaos, and to be present in the exquisite messiness of our lives.

Make an appointment to meet yourself on your cushion (or chair, bed, or sofa). Choose an aspiration and imagine someone in your life who best embodies this quality (or lack thereof). Imagine this person sitting across from you and see this person as you and yourself as this person. See the world through their eyes and body and lived experiences. Reflect on your shared humanity and that they, like you, aspire for health, happiness, safety, love, connection, and freedom. Breathe in your intention to heal and transform and breathe out your aspiration to share in life’s bounty.

In the immortal words of Ram Dass, “We’re all just walking each other home.”