I love those moments when I am aware enough to nudge my usual reaction elsewhere. Sadly, not quite as often as I would hope…also a lesson. Thanks for sharing this!!
Thank you for this!
Every night I write to myself and then again for my side hustle post the next morning. I ask what I need to share and let the information come.
Tonight I was oddly guided to find a quote. And instead of Google, I found myself here. I discovered precisely what I needed. Thank you guys for sharing these things, it’s all very helpful on many levels.
This message has been crazy consistent in just the last few minutes. My own writing revealed something extremely similar, I came here and found that messsage about the rose and being ourselves, I heard something onyoutube saying that all relationships and situations have the purpose of bringing us into more of who we truly are, and I turned on my meditation app to this message. Being ourselves is a pretty strong message tonight. It’s good to remember that we are all pretty incredible souls. 
Its a great quote
I just let Google pick a quote for me. It fits surprisingly well in my train of thought today
Tomorrow it will probably pick the same, but this was the first time I did it and indeed it was an excellent one for where I’m at.
Crazy how we get whay we need when we need it. I love that thought on happiness.
from “The Pocket Thich Nhat Hanh (Shambhala Pocket Classics)” by Thich Nhat Hanh, Melvin McLeod -
“It is essential to understand that an emotion is merely something that arises, remains, and then goes away. A storm comes, it stays a while, and then it moves away. At the critical moment, remember that you are much more than your emotions.”
I really felt this. Thank you 
Reading this in this moment I felt a sense of calmness in my racing mind.
Hard to put into words how this affected me. I guess growing up, maybe society, I was taught…you are your emotions. Something I had to control. Ashamed when I was angry, cautious when i was happy…emotions dont define me…
I think it says a lot about our societies that we are not taught what to do with our emotions. It’s a basic part of being human but skilfully dealing with our emotions is not part of our education or societal expectations.
I drank my emotions away. It took a long time to figure out I could just be with emotion.
Pema spoke to me today and I am listening…having compassion for myself and others thru the process of life and acknowledging where shifts and softness are needed. @Thirdmonkey, thank you again for sharing this path and the Pocket Pema.
No thanks needed. We are all in this together, and I am just happy that people have recieved something out of all of this. I am thankful for others input. Seems to always be something I need, and something I am not focusing on in the moment.
from “The Pocket Thich Nhat Hanh (Shambhala Pocket Classics)” by Thich Nhat Hanh, Melvin McLeod -
“Anger has the power to burn and destroy. If you don’t know the practice of mindfulness, you will allow yourself to be burned and destroyed by anger. You will suffer and those around you will suffer as well. That is why, when you notice that anger is coming up, you have to do something right away. It is important to act, rather than react. You have to act by inviting the seed of mindfulness to arise. We breathe in and we breathe out, making steps, generating the energy of mindfulness in order to take care of our anger. Suppose a mother is working in the living room and she hears her baby crying. Chances are she puts down whatever she is doing and goes to her baby’s room. She picks up the baby and holds it tenderly in her arms. This is exactly what we can do when the energy of anger comes up. Our anger is our ailing baby. We must nurture it in order to calm it.”
I needed this with the saga of the youngest one that is going on. Anyway…what stood out to me is the ,“it ismportant to act,…” My entire upbringing was “its normal to get angry, just dont do anything when you are angry because you will regret it later”…which on some levels is very valid.
I have lived my life, just keeping anger inside and waitong for it to pass, and if I let it influence me…then I feel ashamed…
from “The Pocket Thich Nhat Hanh (Shambhala Pocket Classics)” by Thich Nhat Hanh, Melvin McLeod -
“In order to forget that we have blocks of pain, sorrow, fear, and violence, we lose ourselves in the practice of consumption. Why do we turn on the television? Why do we continue to watch, even if the programs are not interesting at all? We watch because we want something to cover up our pain, sorrow, fear, and anger. We don’t want those feelings to come up, so we suppress them by consuming. There is some feeling of loneliness, fear, or depression inside that we don’t want, so we pick up the newspaper, we turn on the radio, we turn on the television, we pick up the phone, we go for a drive. We do everything we can to avoid confronting our true selves. This kind of consumption is a practice of running away, and the items we consume continue to bring the toxins of violence, fear, and anger into us. By practicing an embargo on our negative feelings, we create a situation of bad circulation in our psyche, suppressing our unwanted thought patterns and not allowing them to circulate. When we create a situation of bad circulation in our consciousness, it causes symptoms of depression and mental illness. When the blood in our body does not circulate well, we experience physical pain—we have a headache, a backache, sometimes there is pain everywhere. When we exercise and massage to help the blood circulate well, we diminish these symptoms in our body. The same is true with our consciousness. If we block unpleasant thought patterns through consumption, we create bad circulation in our psyche, and symptoms of mental illness will appear. That is why it’s very important to lift the embargo, allowing fear, pain, and sorrow to come up.”
Deank my pain and emotions away, use tobacco to releave stress…That wasnt the end of my consumption to deal with emotions. On some level I know that the examples given above are ways to deal with the “ik” of feelings.
I need to ask myself “why, what” when ever I turn to TV, reading, ect. I need that exercise daily to continue to be better with the emotional dealings of life.
Consumption is such the perfect word for it.
It truly is. It measures those activites like i measured alcohol…measured by consumption
from “The Pocket Thich Nhat Hanh (Shambhala Pocket Classics)” by Thich Nhat Hanh, Melvin McLeod -
“Say you have a notion of happiness, an idea about what will make you happy. That idea has its roots in you and your environment. The idea tells you what conditions you need in order to be happy. You’ve entertained the idea for ten or twenty years, and now you realize that your idea of happiness is making you suffer. There may be an element of delusion, anger, or craving in it. These elements are the substance of suffering. On the other hand, you know that you have other kinds of experiences: moments of joy, release, or true love. You recognize these as moments of real happiness. When you have had a moment of real happiness, it becomes easier to release the objects of your craving, because you are developing the insight that these objects will not make you happy.”
I was once told. “Worry about happiness? That is an oxymoron. The more you worry about it, the further it gets away from you. Just BE”
Today I will just “Be”, far easier way to live, and happiness finds me.