Openness doesn’t come from resisting our fears but rather from getting to know them well.
PEMA CHODRONFeel the feelings and drop the story.
More Pema Chodron Quotes
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Each person’s life is like a mandala – a vast, limitless circle. We stand in the center of our own circle, and everything we see, hear and think forms the mandala of our life … everything that shows up in your mandala is a vehicle for your awakening.
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Don’t worry about achieving. Don’t worry about perfection. Just be there each moment as best you can.
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Resisting what is happening is a major cause of suffering.
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Feelings like disappointment, embarrassment, irritation, resentment, anger, jealousy, and fear, instead of being bad news, are actually very clear moments that teach us where it is that we’re holding back.
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Since death is certain and the time of death is uncertain, what is the most important thing?
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In the end, that’s what we all need more than anything else: to be there for each other, in every kind of situation.
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All situations teach you, and often it’s the tough ones that teach you best.
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The central question of a warrior’s training is not how we avoid uncertainty and fear but how we relate to discomfort.
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Be kinder to yourself. And then let your kindness flood the world.
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You are the sky. Everything else – it’s just the weather.
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One of the deepest habitual patterns that we have is to feel that now is not enough.
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Only to the extent that we expose ourselves over and over to annihilation can that which is indestructible in us be found.
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Nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know.
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If someone comes along and shoots an arrow into your heart, it’s fruitless to stand there and yell at the person. It would be much better to turn your attention to the fact that there’s an arrow in your heart.
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Our true nature is like a precious jewel: although it may be temporarily buried in mud, it remains completely brilliant and unaffected. We simply have to uncover it.
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To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest. To live fully is to be always in no-man’s-land, to experience each moment as completely new and fresh. To live is to be willing to die over and over again.
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Anything we experience, no matter how challenging, can become an open pathway to awakening.
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There’s nothing more important on our spiritual path than developing gentleness to oneself.
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In meditation, you learn how to get out of your own way long enough for there to be room for your wisdom to manifest.
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The future is completely open and we are writing it moment to moment.
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When we resist change, it’s called suffering. But when we can completely let go and not struggle against it, when we can embrace the groundlessness of our situation and relax into it’s dynamic quality, that’s called enlightenment.
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Nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know. Even if we run a hundred miles an hour to the other side of the continent, we find the very same problem awaiting us when we arrive.
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The greatest obstacle to connecting with our joy is resentment.
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We work on ourselves in order to help others, but also we help others in order to work on ourselves.
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Rejoicing in ordinary things is not sentimental or trite. It actually takes guts. Each time we drop our complaints and allow everyday good fortune to inspire us, we enter the warrior’s world.
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Deep down in the human spirit, there is a reservoir of courage. It is always available, always waiting to be discovered.
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