When Things Fall Apart

Three of the ideas you’ll keep

The Clif summary of When Things Fall Apart pulls out 7 insights. Here are the first three.

1. Stop running from groundlessness. The urge to find solid footing is what keeps you anxious; practice relaxing into uncertainty instead of scrambling to fix or escape it.
2. Treat fear as a messenger, not an enemy. When fear shows up, get curious and study it directly, move toward the feeling with friendliness rather than numbing or avoiding it.
3. Practice maitri (unconditional friendliness toward yourself). Drop the self-criticism and meet your own ugliest feelings without judgment; self-acceptance, not self-improvement, is the foundation.

The other 4 — and the full 11-minute summary — are in the app.

What’s inside: 12 chapters

The whole summary runs about 11 minutes, read or listened to.

1. Intimacy with Fear
2. When Things Fall Apart
3. This Very Moment Is the Perfect Teacher
4. Relaxing with Groundlessness
5. Maitri: Loving-Kindness Toward Yourself
6. Getting Unhooked: Working with Emotions
7. Hopelessness and Death
8. The Eight Worldly Dharmas
9. Six Kinds of Loneliness
10. Tonglen and Bodhichitta
11. Three Methods for Working with Chaos
12. Growing Up: From Idea to Practice