"I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself" These are the words of a hospice worker, as she summarised the reflections of her wards, as they faced the final days of their time here on earth.
Whether you believe in regrets or not, we all have a yearning to be true to ourselves, to our calling, to our purpose and live our lives with meaning and passion. This is the offering of Tara Brach in her latest book Radical Compassion - Learning to Love Yourself and Your World with RAIN.
Tara Brach is an American psychologist, author, and proponent of Buddhist meditation. She is a guiding teacher and founder of the Insight Meditation Community of Washington, D.C. Tara is probably best known for her meditation practice - R.A.I.N that stands for the four steps fo Recognise, Allow, Investigate and Nurture. Throughout the book, R.A.I.N takes centre stage, providing a formula for the process of loving ourselves into healing.
While many Meditation teachers require a certain level of enlightenment or experience to be able to truly comprehend and derive value from their teachings, Brach has a way of stooping to welcome the absolute beginner while simultaneously reaching to address the most experienced meditators amongst us, with her work.
She teaches us how Mindfulness and Compassion are inseparable dimensions of awakening, appearing as the two wings of the bird of awareness. The essence of this book is to breathe life into these wings, adapting the tools so elegantly laid out for us so by Brach so that whenever we are in need of relief from emotional pain and suffering, we can engage in radical compassion, and give our own birds of awareness the freedom to fly.
This book is a comprehensive guide to developing a mindfulness practice, with fully laid our meditations, step by step actions and reflections that you will find yourself quoting, sharing and returning to over and over again.
If you enjoy storytelling, then you will delight in the heartwarming parables this book holds. If you are enthralled with the mysticism of the Buddhist traditions, then this book will keep you turning page after page. If you have a thirst for all things spiritual and therapeutic then you no longer have to separate the two. Brach has done a wonderful job of merging both her spiritual understanding and her mental health expertise effortlessly and seamlessly as though they always were one and the same.
Whether you are dealing with the impacts of 2020, searching for a meaningful gift for a friend or family member or just looking to expand your personal meditation content library, then this is a must buy.
Radical Compassion by Tara Brach is available now on Amazon and Audible. If you would like to find out more about Tara and R.A.I.N she has plenty of free resources on her website