Hello, thanks for listening to this Darma podcast. I hope you consider that in accordance

with the Buddhist tradition all of my work is a teacher is offered without charge and supported

entirely by donations only. If you'd like to support this work,

you'll find a paypal button on darmapunk NYC.com.

The bulk of my life is providing emotional support,

one-on-one settings, Buddhist spiritual counseling. There's this difficulty that so many people have with

allowing themselves to experience a breath of relief.

Give ourselves permission to stop looking for all the things that could go wrong,

and certainly there always are things that could go wrong and certainly there always are things that could go wrong.

There never will be a settled world that we live in.

The world has always been a messy place.

It's still important for us to be able to know how to experience times of relief,

times where we're not on the edge, whether from our own personal challenges or the global challenges.

I notice how vulnerable people feel when they try to give themselves even

a moment to just let good news sink in or to disconnect from all of the dramas of life and

just be able to find and carve out times of ease and restoration.

So why is it so difficult for us to do this? Why are we so hesitant to put aside our

fixation with all the bad things that could happen, all the challenges we might be facing.

Well, a fundamental influence is negativity bias. The brain, as we've talked about in the past, over-emphasizes threats and focuses attention

on all possible things that could go wrong.

In other words, throughout our ancestral development,

missed opportunities for food, sex, and shelter didn't really come at so great a cost.

...