This excerpt discusses choosing a committed, lifelong practice of self-awareness and caring for oneself and others. The speakers argue that this dedication is often absent from formal education and emphasize the need for practices and mutual care to avoid estrangement and suffering.
People entering a noble struggle by making the decision to be aware of themselves, that it's really entering a way of being and a way of life. It's a real decision to do that. And it's not one like, let me do this for a week and then fall off the wagon and go back to being unconscious. It has tremendous implications. How do we form that commitment? And does it truly necessitate the kind of dedication that all those other things do?
Yes, it definitely requires the dedication that.
Those other things do. As a matter of fact, it's even longer term for many people. And unfortunately, it's not something that's in our education system, which would be something along the lines of, how are you really doing today, Johnny, from the time you're in kindergarten?
And how can you take care of yourself? And in a certain way, the practices.
That I'm attempting to support myself and.
Other people with is an outgrowth of those two questions. And it is how's it really going like we do in our friendship, we ask, and an implicit understanding that we want to care for each other and ourselves. And those coexisting questions falling in love with them again, not because we should do it or society has taught us to do it, but it's a question of even as you listen to it, does it make sense that you'd be interested in your own internal experience? And does it make sense that you really want to care for yourself and those close to you at the same time? And it's an odd thing when that that's even a question. There's some intuitive place inside all of us that recognizes if we're estranged from ourselves, we have no chance of being fulfilled. And if we don't cultivate caring wishes, intelligent strategies and practices to support ourselves, we're also going to be suffering.
