Book Reflection: Christopher Gemer's The Mindful Path to Self-Compassion

I discovered mindfulness meditation in early 2016 and fully developed a daily practice this year.   As meaningful as it is, it ought to come with a warning "Do Not Try This If You Are Not Ready to Work and Become Someone New."   Sitting is the easy part, but staying seated and gradually opening space to become aware of the thoughts, feelings, and memories that come and pass is the hard part.   This book helped me to develop new tools to offer kindness, care, and space for my experience in the moment.   

As I have committed to my mediation practice over the past months, the most accessible analogy for the experience is to describe the practice as if you were developing an extra gear mentally and physically.  Driving a stick shift is becoming a lost art,  but in the late 90s I had as small Nissan pickup truck that allowed me to learn and enjoy this type of driving experience.   Manual transmission have more "pep" when accelerating and that comes in handy getting in and out of tight or congested spaces.   I used to wish that there was a gear between second and third on my truck, since I felt second was overworking while driving in residential areas and third made the truck drag.   This type of extra gear would have made coasting without speeding require much less shifting.  This is the feeling that began to emerge in the weeks and months after I committed to my practice.  In moments of true anxiety, fear,  and shame, following the prompts back to my breath became that coasting gear.    

The book comes with practical examples of the meditations, sets of exercises, and encouragement through some of the common challenges.   The author is psychotherapist and a Buddhist and his connection between both of these perspectives adds a great deal to the practice.  With these tools,  your reliance on external reassurances of safety slowly withdrawal and it's you and your acceptance and awareness that becomes the refuge.  To borrow a thought,  with mindfulness we can become "the ones we are waiting for."
Who is this book for?

1. People looking for a sense of inner peace.   Our biology has made us adaptable and able to survive harsh conditions.  The practice mindfulness respects the way our limbic system has evolved and applies the phenomenal benefits of neuroplasticity - changes to our environment, our reactions, awareness, and acceptance make physical changes to the primal portions of our brain that govern our fight or flight responses.
2. People, like me, who are ridiculously hard on themselves.   Ever dwell on a mistake decades old?  Do you feel you don't measure up as soon as someone more successful walks in the room?    Do you think  you are a fake, waiting to be found?   If you answered all three with "yes", I am sorry there is no grand prize (but you are probably cynical and suspected that all along).   However, from my heart to yours - there is another way.  Perhaps, an infinite set of other ways to see yourself and live your life.
3. People who think self-compassion sounds silly, dumb, or bizarre.    You may struggle with offering yourself the same quality care and love you show to family and friends.  This isn't trendy self-help advice., mindfulness is older than the western civilization that we have assumed to be eternal while blindly accepting that it alone is the container of all the possible levels of truth.
4. People who wish to cope with difficult people.   The section on loving-kindness meditation is meaningful work  and it teaches how to extend your kindness to those close to you, then to acquaintances, and finally to the difficult people in your life.   The paradox that emerges is that the kinder I can hold the difficult people in my life, the easier it becomes to extend more kindness to my own life.   Maybe, "Love your neighbor as yourself"  is good for everyone involved, after all.

Let me know if you check out this book!