Welcome Everything, Push Away Nothing

by Carol Russell
Adapted from a talk given at Tuesday night meditation on June 3, 2025

The title of my talk tonight comes from the second invitation in Frank Ostaseski’s book, The Five Invitations. Similar to my last talk, in which I used the first invitation from his book for a talk entitled ‘Don’t Wait,’ I will use the point of view of welcoming everything and pushing away nothing as a jumping off place for this exploration of the Dhamma. 

Welcome everything, push away nothing – what are we welcoming and why would we want to do that?

I don’t know about you, but I have a very old habit of trying to improve or ‘fix’ what I don’t like, and that often involves a lot of pushing and grasping, and not a lot of welcoming. Does that sound familiar to anyone? There is nothing inherently wrong with making things better, but when we leap into that habit as soon as things get uncomfortable, does it limit us? 

Life is both lovely and awful. Both sweet and terrifying.  Why would we want to move closer to ALL of life, especially when it is uncomfortable? Why not move closer ONLY to the joyful, peaceful, and positive parts of life? Why not hang out only with the people who make us feel good and avoid the rest? 

The Dhamma teaches that denying or pushing away our experience is a sure path to suffering. It is right there in the Four Noble Truths. Clinging to what is pleasurable and pushing away what is unwanted is so human, yet it is a limiting and stressful way of living. 

Welcome everything, push away nothing. It’s not that we only welcome the nice thoughts and feelings. And it’s also not like we should focus only on the uncomfortable stuff, although the negative bias of our brains sometimes goes down that road. We don’t have to like the ‘everything.’ Everything includes what we like, what we don’t like, what’s boring, what’s pleasurable and not pleasurable and all the in-between.

Does this mean we are a doormat, letting every person or experience walk all over us, and welcoming it? Nope. Paradoxically, being utterly receptive means we are free. Free to respond skillfully and responsively. Free to set boundaries. Free to pursue what is in line with our highest aspirations. As Frank Ostaseski writes, ‘Acceptance is not resignation. It is an opening to possibility.’ 

Have you ever noticed how if we are rejecting parts of our experience, that takes a lot of energy and focus?  Keeping up a persona takes a lot of energy.  Yet, through a lifetime we have perhaps believed that was the way to well-being. It can be exhausting.

As we loosen up our clinging and attempts to control our experience, we learn our well-being is not completely tied to external circumstances, and then maybe we feel a bit more centered in ourselves, a little more resilient, and we get more adept at meeting every little bit of life as it comes our way. This is very a very practical and useful way to be.

And we move closer to the mystery of what it is to be human, and rather than one sliver of the pie, we open the whole range of possibilities available to us in this embodied earthly life.

Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer’s poem “Letter to the Parts of Me I Have Tried to Exile” expresses a healing journey of welcoming all aspects of ourselves:  

I’m sorry. I thought banishing you   
was the way to become better,   
more perfect, more good, more free.   
The irony: I thought if I cut you off  
and cast you out, if I built the walls  
high enough, then the parts left would be   
more whole. As if the sweet orange   
doesn’t need the toughened rind,   
the bitter seed. As if the forest  
doesn’t need the blue fury of fire.   
It didn’t work, did it, the exile?   
You were always here, jangling  
the hinges, banging at the door,  
whispering through the cracks.   
Left to myself, I wouldn’t have known   
to take down the walls,   
nor would I have had the strength to do so.  
That act was grace disguised as disaster.   
But now that the walls are rubble,  
it is also grace that teaches me to want  
to embrace you, grace that guides me   
to be gentle, even with the part of me   
that would still try to exile any other part.   
It is grace that invites me   
to name all parts beloved.  
How honest it all is. How human.   
I promise to keep learning how  
to know you as my own, to practice  
opening to what at first feels unwanted,  
meet it with understanding,  
trust all belongs, welcome you home.

‘Name all parts beloved. How honest it all is.’  I love the kindness of that phrase. I feel something let go and relax inside. It really is exhausting to keep secrets from ourselves. Trying to banish parts of ourselves is a battle with reality that we will inevitably lose. 

We talk a lot about suffering here. It’s a big subject. Kenn gave a great talk about suffering recently, including the distinction between pain and suffering. Reading Frank Ostaseski’s book, I was reminded me of the formula: Pain + resistance = suffering.

Pain is going to come our way. That’s just how it is. All beings have pain or will have pain. Physical, emotional, mental. We’re talking about loosening up our resistance to the pain by honestly acknowledging our experience, and not adding suffering to the pain by resisting.

I have a learned a great deal from Carl Jung’s teachings on persona and shadow. In his construct, persona and shadow are formed when we are very young and learning to navigate the world. In our efforts to fit in, have some control over our lives, and create good experiences, we tend to develop those parts which are acceptable to those around us – family and culture - and repress those parts which are not. We set up a kind of filter of our view of ourselves and the world. 

Those parts we deny about ourselves become our shadow. Our shadow parts aren’t necessarily ‘bad’, (although they might be highly unskillful); they’re the ones that are not rewarded as we’re growing up. If not intentionally seen, and brought into the light, the shadow expresses itself in unconscious and unhealthy ways.

This is where I think the teachings of the Buddha are so potent, because I find this approach is more complete – it goes right to the root of self. We study and put into practice the teachings of not-self - anattā - and the second noble truth - how we are clinging to a self-image and how that causes suffering. As we begin to see the self as empty of any inherent solidity, layer by layer, it makes loosening up this clinging to a fixed sense of self more doable. Truly, a very big subject and a lifetime of effort.

The shadow is not the ‘enemy,’ but rather something to be – like all of life - received and integrated into our practices. Over time we get better at recognizing the hidden parts of our ‘self’ as part of a functional yet fabricated and malleable self, which takes away most of the shadow’s hidden power. 

In time, we can develop enough resilience to be able to look right into our wounds. here’s how Frank Ostaseski says it:
We learn that whatever we give space to can move. Our feelings of discomfort or anxiety, frustration or anger are free to open, unfold, and reveal their true causes. Often in allowing our pain to arise, we discover a point of stillness, even peacefulness – right in the middle of the suffering.

I once did a two-year long course that included an exploration of shadow. We even made costumes and had a gathering where we arrived dressed as some aspect of our shadow. It was enlightening, and I learned something very important in that experience: There is gold in the shadow and it is important to come to recognize and embrace that gold with kindness and curiosity.

Aspects of shadow work and the study of emptiness can be somewhat intellectual and psychological. That’s an important approach. I like to think of this kind of work as an on-going thing, finding pieces of the puzzle, something I dive into it when it calls me. And also, so as not to be too much in my head, I make an effort to remember that all of it is built on the foundation of moment-to-moment awareness, of embodiment, of rooting ourselves in kindness, of meeting the moment just as it is and returning to the big view, of diminishing suffering for others as well as ourselves. 

‘Name all parts beloved. How honest it all is.’ writes the poet.

This kind of training in fearlessness – being honest with ourselves, welcoming everything, pushing away nothing – serves us as we face the inevitable losses that are a part of life. Our aging and dying, the aging and dying of those we love, invite us to open, to be present to what is happening, not to turn away when things are hard. Perhaps you remember the quote about the dying from Stephen Jenkinson that I included in my last talk: ‘Though they are not likely to ask for it, dying people need a faithful witness to their dying, not someone who will banish what is hard and demanding about dying.’

There’s a softness to welcoming and accepting all parts of ourselves, all parts of life. I hope you felt that in the meditation tonight. A way to practice with awareness of what is - as light and gentle as a feather’s touch.

There is also a way in which the work of welcoming everything, pushing away nothing happens on a collective level. What are our reactions to what is happening in our country and in the world right now? Do we tend to push away people because we disagree with them?  – that family member, our neighbor, or an entire category of fellow citizens whom we have stereotyped and lumped together as the fearsome ‘other.’

The Russian writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn put it beautifully:
“If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?” 

We see this on both sides of political views in our very divided country: If only we could get rid of the ‘other side’, then we could have the country we want – a kind of imaginary promised land. Is this not the basis of hate and even genocide? As I have said many times here when I speak about engaging with the world, it is not asked of us to agree with someone’s view, even as we respectfully seek to understand and respect those who disagree with us. We should ardently stand up for our own views when they are rooted in love, kindness, justice, and care. 

Can we see in ourselves what Solzhenitsyn is saying, that each human heart – including our own -- contains both good and evil, the wholesome and the unwholesome, and be honest about that? Welcome that? Touch it with the softness and kindness of a feather. 

Like the discussion guidelines I went over during the announcements, we work to make space for everyone, and in that way, we are participating in and contributing to a culture of intention, a culture of courage. 

Welcome everything, push away nothing. That is the way to compassion and freedom.

This is from bell hooks, in her book All About Love:

" To know love we have to tell the truth to ourselves and to others. Creating a false self to mask fears and insecurities has become so common that many of us forget who we are and what we feel underneath the pretense. Breaking through this denial is always the first step in uncovering our longing to be honest and clear."

‘To know love, we have to tell the truth to ourselves.’ This is the very good news: welcoming of everything and pushing away nothing is an act of love. Love that is boundless; this kind of love doesn’t much hang out in a divided contracted heart. Love like this melts partitions and separations. In unlimited love, everything belongs. 

It can be tricky to talk about love, I think. Maybe most of the time, we are not present to that kind of love. It’s not the kind of romantic or reciprocal love that we often see. It is beyond conditions. Yet, we can touch in to this universal goodness inside of us, and carry that awareness with us.

We all have shielded our hearts from pain in various ways, - perhaps wisely at times - finding that makes us less vulnerable and keeps us safe. There is nothing dishonorable in that.  As the poet says: 

‘I thought if I cut you off  
and cast you out, if I built the walls  
high enough, then the parts left would be   
more whole.’

But, as Frank Ostaseski writes, exiling parts of ourself also "cuts us off from love, dulling our sensitivity, steeling us to our experience, and locking out tenderness, comfort, mercy, and joy that we need."  As we open up, he goes on to say, we see "even our armor was never separate from love."

What becomes evident is that love is the fruit of this honest welcoming of everything, and love gives us the resilience and courage to open. It is a beneficial cycle. Opening to everything and boundless love are mutually arising. 

DEDICATION:
May we be courageous in our willingness to see ourselves as we are. May our willingness to see ourselves as we are open our compassionate hearts to see others as they are. May there be peace.