Awaken the Capacity to Love, the True Purpose of Our Lives Have you ever wanted to love and connect with others more deeply ... but felt that you could use a little help shedding the emotional armor and opening your heart? With Awakening Love, Pema Choedroen invites you to start wherever you are, amid any and all of the challenges, frustrations, or fears you may be facing, and to use them as the starting place to awaken the natural and boundless capacity to give and receive love more fully. This practice-centered program, recorded at Gampo Abbey, will teach you how to apply the insights of Buddhism's Four Limitless Ones-lovingkindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity-to even your most difficult obstacles. Your Obstacles to the Open Heart Are Your Most Valuable Allies Many students confess to Pema Choedroen that they cannot think of even one person to love during heart-centered meditation practice. This is what she tells them: What if you could open to that frustration, just for a moment, to discover not just where love is free flowing ... but where it's not? That is how we all begin to uncover the soft spot within. Here, Pema Choedroen brings her unique blend of kitchen-table common sense, scholarship, and empathy to help you discover the eternal resilience and joy of your own tender, undefended, and genuine heart. Whether you're in the midst of a challenging relationship, grief, or simply in need of heart-centered rejuvenation, Awakening Love provides you with the gentle step-by-step instructions needed to awaken the natural goodness within you. Highlights The Four Qualities or Limitless Ones, the roots of suffering, and expanding the capacity to love * Seeing where we're blocked and bringing lovingkindness to our biases and fears * Aspiration practice, not faking it, unblocking the flow of love, and benefactors * Changing our attitude toward pain, working with anger, compassionate abiding, tonglen, and making friends with the hard stuff * Meditations and practices for receiving unconditional love, resting in natural awareness, cultivating gratitude and sympathetic joy, opening to the world, and more