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.
PEMA CHODRONWe can let the circumstances of our lives harden us so that we become increasingly resentful and afraid, or we can let them soften us and make us kinder and more open to what scares us. We always have this choice.
More Pema Chodron Quotes
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If we learn to open our hearts, anyone, including the people who drive us crazy, can be our teacher.
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The truth you believe and cling to makes you unavailable to hear anything new.
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It isn’t what happens to us that causes us to suffer; it’s what we say to ourselves about what happens.
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Feeling irritated, restless, afraid, and hopeless is a reminder to listen more carefully.
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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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Things falling apart is a kind of testing and also a kind of healing.
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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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All you need to know is that the future is wide open and you are about to create it by what you do.
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The future is completely open and we are writing it moment to moment.
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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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There’s nothing more important on our spiritual path than developing gentleness to oneself.
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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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Whatever happens in your life, joyful or painful, do not be swept away by reactivity. Be patient with yourself and don’t lose your sense of perspective.
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Use what seems like poison as medicine. Use your personal suffering as the path to compassion for all beings.
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Obstacles are our friends: they teach us where we’re stuck.
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