meditation meetup

Today the ideal opportunity to finally attend the meditation meetup came up.
after meditating for half an hour we read parts of a book and then discussed it.

I've been very out of it mentally, for lack of proper rest, for alot of stressful events, heartbreak, toxic people too close, depression, getting off depression medication, and not being able to cope very well with any of that. Being here away from people and places i know makes me disabled to deal with stuff it seems.

Whatever.

What i was trying to say is that because of this, i only retained a few ideas from the meetup and i thought i'd write them down here. Randomly:

Quote: If you want to be a light in the world, prepare to be burned.

In a book about an interview between the dalai lama and a scientist the later asked if the Dalai Lama regrets anything in his life. He responded that he regrets what he said when an aging monk came to him agonizing about not being to do the hardcore exercise he had done all his life, he wanted to know what he could do to be able to do them again, and D.L. suggested he moved on with his life, accepting he is now old. That monk went on and killed himself. Then the scientist asked : how were you able to eventually leave that event behind you? The D. Lama replied: I haven't.

Note to self/moral of story: we can carry all the bad events with us, not forget /ignore them and still have space for all the good things in life. The soul is big enough for all of it. Bad things don't need to take over the soul, they can be remembered and relived, not good to dwell too much, but not good to forget it either. Its easier to forget it. But then you loose a bit of your soul, a but of who you are.

i needed to hear that.
Another thing, off topic, that i needed to hear and came to me last night through an email is:
"What other people think about you is none of your business". I love that. so true. Other people can project whatever crap they want on me, but it only informs about who they are, what they have inside. Always healing to remember that.

We also read a book entitled Places we Fear... but I wasnt able to take much fr0m it, i'd need to read it and re-read it as i have saturn-mercury on top of all the things mentioned above. I look forward to going next week again.