When we Fail to Accept Afflictive Emotions

     "We numb (our) vulnerability. We are the most in-debt, obese, addicted & medicated adult cohort in US history. The problem is - and I learned it from my research - is that you cannot selectively numb emotion.
     You can't say "Here's the bad stuff. Here's vulnerability, here's grief, here's shame, here's fear, here's disappointment - I don't want to feel these. I'm going to have a couple of beers & a banana-nut muffin. I don't want to feel these." You can't numb those hard feelings without (simultaneously) numbing the other affects or emotions - you cannot selectively numb. 
     So when we numb those, we numb joy, we numb gratitude, we numb happiness, and then we are miserable, and we're looking for purpose & meaning. And then we feel vulnerable, and then we have a couple of beers & a banana-nut muffin. And it becomes this dangerous cycle. 
     One of the things we have to think about is why & how we numb."
       Brene Brown PhD, from her (20min) TEDtalk below

Unconditional Love - Needing, Recognizing, Radiating

     It seems that our true core nature is unconditional love - we feel completely at home when we radiate unconditional love. We seem to need nothing more than being just that. 
     Most of us, most of the time, are not aware of who / what we are - so much so, that we crave that which we already are: unconditional love. We fervently search for "love in all the wrong places": money, sex, power, fame, prestige, respect, ritual, dogma, cults, drugs, gambling, gangs ... 
     Our heart-mind gradually awakens to reality, gradually lets go of childish - yet very sticky - things, and finds the joy of coming home (never really having left) to simply being unconditional love.

     See also: http://mindfulnessforeveryone.blogspot.ca/2013/04/321-fear-of-change-loss-of-security.html
     and: http://www.johnlovas.com/2013/03/vow-to-keep-your-heart-open-no-matter.html

RP McMurphy   www.dpreview.com