. I felt overwhelmed, as if I was going to collapse under the weight of the suffering and my task. What could I offer? Then I remembered the “giving and receiving” technique of tonglen. . . . So I breathed in the suffering as if it were a dark cloud and breathed out golden light from my heart into the room and to everyone I encountered. A whole new level of integration happened. I could open to the experience of suffering and found something necessary and precious to sustain me. The suffering became fluid with each breath and washed over me so that I began to become unstuck. I began to feel
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