Question: What does it look like, for you, in practice, to accept another person's humanness without enabling dysfunction, in some instances, or without continuing to leave yourself to be open to toxic energy/ projections?

Response: It is my experience that when I am able to see the humanness of another, tremendous insight and compassion arise. I notice there is a difference between reacting to another out of a sense of habit—shoulds\shouldn’ts—and responding with openness.

Question: Dear Elizabeth, I have been practicing the Dharma for the past two years now and slowly observe the awakening of feeling within my body. Now, I notice that the lower body (particularly the root chakra and area below the naval) are almost always stirring. My conceptual mind tells me this is the feeling of being "sexually aroused," however, this feeling begins to stir without any sort of stimulation. For example, I am at work, or in class, or practicing. I do practice being mindful to not label the feeling and to just let it be. But part of me begins to feel nervous or scared when these feelings come up...
Response: Thank you for your question. When I read it I thought how wonderful that you speak of the feeling of awakening in your body. This shows that the practice is working in you. We often think that practice involves just the mind (although how do you separate body and mind???) Practice transforms the body, our thoughts, emotions, our energy too...

I suppose, if we look at it in one way, it is good news that we feel disturbed when we feel jealous. This shows that we have a conscience – that in truth we really do want others to be happy and don’t want to feel uncomfortable about their good fortune. And yet we experience this inner-conflict.

Question: what happens when people fall in love?

Response:Dear Rudolf,

I’m not sure if this means “how” do we fall in love…or what happens after we fall in love…or what makes it possible for us to fall in love. But I love the question!

Question: A theme that seems to come up in the Dharma is nakedness. In my life, I have found it extremely difficult to be naked, to be exposed both physically and emotionally. I tend to enjoy quite a bit of privacy. When I am exposed, I feel very uncomfortable, quite agitated and it's times when I feel extremely agitated that I do not want to sit on my cushion. In fact, if I get to such a point of agitation, I don't sit on my cushion but do things to numb it out. Is there a way that I could methodically work with this type of situation so that I can systematically learn to gently unveil myself?

Response:Dear Friend,

Thank you for this wonderful question. I found it helpful to look into this experience of being exposed or naked. It always surprises me how finding specific words to articulate an experience – like “nakedness” – can evoke so much learning and illumination.

I want to begin here with a story about nakedness.