"Although it is embarrassing and painful, it is very healing to stop hiding from yourself. It is healing to know all the ways that you shut down, deny, close off, criticize people, all your weird little ways. You can know all that with some sense of humor and kindness. By knowing yourself, you're coming to know humanness altogether. We are all up against these things. We are all in this together. So when you realize that you're talking to yourself, label it "thinking" and notice your tone of voice. Let it be compassionate and gentle and humorous. Then you'll be changing old stuck patterns that are shared by the whole human race. Compassion for others begins with kindness to ourselves."
"If you have this ideal of yourself as a hero or helper or doctor and everybody else as the victim, the patient, the deprived, the underdog, you are continuing to create the notion of separateness. Someone might end up getting more food or better housing, and that's a big help; those things are necessary. But the fundamental problem of isolation, hatred and aggression is not addressed. Or perhaps you get flamboyant in your healer role. You often see this with political action. People make a big display, and suddenly the whole thing doesn't have to do with helping anyone at all but with building themselves up."
~Pema Chodron, from Start Where You Are
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