Interviewed by "Drinking to Distraction"

The beautiful Jenna

My excellent pal Jenna interviewed me for her cool blog about quitting drinking and how her life changed when she did. She has become a meditation practitioner and we talked about stuff like fear, safety, distractions, why it is that we’re all so vulnerable, and whether or not spiritual practice will make you safe.

An excerpt:

JH: Your books are about concepts – like heartbreak and fear – that are so common and yet so difficult. Why are these things so hard?

SP: I don’t know why they’re so hard. I just think we all carry around this incredible vulnerability. We are all so vulnerable! And we build these complicated structures within ourselves and around ourselves that we think can protect us; like ‘if I live in a certain neighborhood, in a certain kind of house, if I adopt a certain nutritional plan, if I fall in love with this kind of person and not that kind of person, I will be protected.’ Deep inside we know that we will never be protected, but we still try to employ all these strategies. It’s really hard to stop.

I think the attunement with your essential vulnerability is the same thing as attunement with your highest wisdom and your deepest creativity and your heart of hearts. It’s difficult to be human. It’s difficult to walk around with what we know is true, which is that we each have a raw and open heart that is without protection at any time.

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categorized in: dharma