The Wisdom of No Escape
by Fran Tomlin

If you haven’t heard of, or read, Pema Chodron then I encourage you to do so. Her teachings are easily understood, basic, simple and profound. They get to grips with the real issues that we, as individuals, and as a species deal with in seemingly never ending cycles.

For example, take this paragraph, from her book “The WIisdom of No Escape”.

“ There’s a common misunderstanding among all the human beings who have ever been born on the earth that the best way to live is to try to avoid pain and just try to get comfortable. You can see this even in insects, animals and birds. All of us are the same.

A much more interesting, kind, adventurous and joyful approach to life is to begin to develop our curiosity, not caring whether the object of our inquisitiveness is bitter or sweet. To lead a life that goes beyond pettiness and prejudice and always wanting to make sure that everything turns out on our own terms. To lead a more passionate, full and delightful life than that, we must realize that we can endure a lot of pain and pleasure for the sake of finding out who we are and what this world is, how we tick and how the world ticks, how the whole thing just is.

If we are committed to comfort at any cost, as soon as we come up against the least edge of pain – we’re going to run: we’ll never know what’s beyond that particular barrier or wall or fearful thing.” In other words, turn to face your fears squarely, experience all that’s good, bad and indifferent and in so doing, those fears will no longer hold you back from experiencing your life to the fullest. Remember when you incarnated onto this planet, when you came to Earth , you came with a passport to pain; It’s the only explicit way we truly learn and gain insight. And yes, one can also learn through Joy and appreciation. The main thing is to experience.”

And further on in another chapter, she says ;

“ Being satisfied with what we already have is a magical golden key to being alive in a full, unrestricted and inspired way. One of the major obstacles to what is traditionally called enlightenment is resentment, feeling cheated, holding a grudge about who you are, what you are. This is why we talk so much about making friends with ourselves, because, for some reason or other, we don’t feeel that kind of satisfaction in a full and complete way. Meditation is a process of lightening up, of trusting the basic goodness of what we have and who we are, and of realizing that any wisdom that exists, exists in what we already have. Our wisdom is all mixed up with what we call our neurosis. Our brilliance, our juiciness, our spiciness, is all mixed up with our craziness and confusion - and therefore it doesn’t do any good to try to get rid of our ‘negative’ aspects, because in the process we also get rid of our basic wonderfulness. We can lead our lives so as to become more awake as to who we are and what we’re doing rather than try to improve, change or get rid of who we are and what we’re doing.

The Key is to wake up, to become more alert, more inquisitive andcurious about ourselves. “

Personally, I couldn’t have said any of what Pema Chodron has expressed better.

The wisdom of no escape is to face head on who, how and what we are, what we have; our circumstances that we in the BIG picture created – and embrace that. To work with it, with ourselves, and in that full on embrace we come into personal enlightenment; to knowing that instead of separation, we are indeed all ONE. And that realization empowers the whole earth, raises the vibration and frequency of earth’s energies and in this way, as a species we can bring the earth into its Golden Age.

Fran Tomlin with gratitude and full credit to Pema Chodron.

Contact Fran on (08) 8331 1112 or mobile: 0405 687 930 Web: www.frantomlinpsychic.com.au Email: www.frantomlinpsychic.com.au Or visit her Facebook page