Working with our propensities

“Working with our propensities is a very helpful way to think in terms of “me.” Just think of it as propensity. The propensity to get angry: you explore the energy of anger, and you even want it to come up so that you can know it and be intimate with it. In terms of our connectedness with each other, you know that this same energy runs through everyone, and you say to yourself, “If I can really know this, rather than it being something I’m ashamed of, it can become the vehicle for working with other people who have anger.” Because I’ve known it so intimately and I’ve known how to make friends with it or how to accept it, its power to destroy me or its power to destroy my happiness or to create suffering gets weakened and weakened and weakened.” -Pema Chodron