The Radical Compassion Institute

Mindfulness and self compassion can directly release the bind of the harmful habits that often rule our lives.  

When our basic needs for love, understanding and safety are not met, we pursue substitute gratifications. Whatever our substitute, it blocks us from satisfying our deepest aspirations for loving relationship and spiritual realization.

Some substitutes are largely socially accepted, such as overachieving, overextending ourselves, trying to check more and more things off the list. Some private habits, like obsessive thinking or spending many hours every day gaming or browsing online, may go unnoticed.

Other behaviors draw more disapproval (causing us to work harder at keeping them hidden), because everyone can see the damage they do: addictions to alcohol or other substances, gambling, shopping, sex, overeating, violence, and so on.

Whichever attachment or addiction we find ourselves caught in, as long as we keep pursuing them and shaming ourselves for doing so, we can’t free ourselves in a deep way.

The good news is that the way we pay attention dramatically affects the structure of our brain and the function of our body, mind and heart. Any time an obsessive thought or a craving arises, if we can learn how to pause just long enough to attend to the feeling of it, we can step out of its trance. And when the self-judge and shame arise, we can learn to hold ourselves with a healing compassion. 

Meditation directly de-conditions habitual grasping - what’s sometimes called the “hungry ghost” syndrome – and allows us to reconnect to our natural intelligence and creativity, and our awakened heart.