Taking the Leap: Freeing Ourselves from Old Habits and Fears
by Pema Chödrön
Shambhala, July 2009
Taking the Leap is an attempt by Pema to help us to learn how to look at our attachments and self-absorption. This little book is full of suggestions for how to work skillfully with our own blind spots. An attempt to look closely at how we are stuck in a narrow absorbed vision and offers ways to get unhooked.
By concentrating on the practice of staying present, we confront our own self-absorption, self-clinging ego, trying not to slip into habits of compulsion and distraction. Pema instructs that our time, that our basic intelligence, openness and warmth naturally interrupt the chain reactions of our ego attachments.
Pema suggests a formal practice for learning to stay with energy of uncomfortable emtions:
Step 1: Acknowledge you are hooked by self-absorption.
Step 2: Pause. Lean in to the energy. Experience it fully. Stay present. Interrupt the momentum.
Step 3: Relax and move on.
Pema’s gift to her readers is that she packs so much into her books and presents her lessons so clearly. Pema helps us defrost our windshield and to enhance our lives daily by trying to practice and understand the wisdom she shares.
As we change ourselves and our dysfumctional habits, we are simultaneously changing the world around us.
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