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Obstacles are our friends: they teach us where we’re stuck.

Pema Chodron

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.
PEMA CHODRON

Arrive Need Problem Run Teaching
Being satisfied with what we already have is a magical golden key to being alive in a full, unrestricted, and inspired way.
PEMA CHODRON

Alive Inspirational Magic Restriction Satisfaction
Appreciate everything, even the ordinary. Especially the ordinary.
PEMA CHODRON

Gratitude Ordinary Praise
The second noble truth says that this resistance is the mechanism of what we call ego, that resisting life causes suffering.
PEMA CHODRON

Call Ego Life Noble Resistance Suffering Truth
Be kinder to yourself. And then let your kindness flood the world.
PEMA CHODRON

Compassionate Kind World Yourself
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.
PEMA CHODRON

Complaint Emotional Fortune Goodness Inspirational Ordinary Rejoice World
Treat yourself as your own beloved child.
PEMA CHODRON

Children Love Self Treat Yourself
Never give up on yourself. Then you will never give up on others.
PEMA CHODRON

Give Up Inspirational Motivational Self Love Yourself
Things falling apart is a kind of testing and also a kind of healing.
PEMA CHODRON

Fall Hard Time Healing Kind Perspective
All situations teach you, and often it’s the tough ones that teach you best.
PEMA CHODRON

Best Hard Time Situation Teaching Tough Yourself
You are the sky. Everything else – it’s just the weather.
PEMA CHODRON

Sky Yourself
In the end, that’s what we all need more than anything else: to be there for each other, in every kind of situation.
PEMA CHODRON

End Kind Situation Support Togetherness
Inner peace begins the moment you choose not to allow another person or event to control your emotions.
PEMA CHODRON

Choice Control Person Moments Peace Yourself
Use what seems like poison as medicine. Use your personal suffering as the path to compassion for all beings.
PEMA CHODRON

Compassionate Medicine Personal Poison Suffering Yourself
The best spiritual instruction is when you wake up in the morning and say, ‘I wonder what’s going to happen today.’ And then carry that kind of curiosity through your life.
PEMA CHODRON

Best Curiosity Instruction Life Morning Spiritual Wonder Yourself
Meditation isn’t really about getting rid of thoughts, it’s about changing the pattern of grasping on to things, which in our everyday experience is our thoughts.
PEMA CHODRON

Change Experience Grasp Meditation Ourselves Pattern Thinking
We work on ourselves in order to help others, but also we help others in order to work on ourselves.
PEMA CHODRON

Help Order Ourselves Work
When we are willing to stay even a moment with uncomfortable energy, we gradually learn not to fear it.
PEMA CHODRON

Comfortable Fear Learning Moments Stay Willing
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.
PEMA CHODRON

Brilliant Bury Jewel Nature Simplicity Temporary True
It isn’t what happens to us that causes us to suffer; it’s what we say to ourselves about what happens.
PEMA CHODRON

Hard Time Ourselves Reaction Suffering
Nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know.
PEMA CHODRON

Need Spiritual Teaching Wisdom
Sticking with that uncertainty, getting the knack of relaxing in the midst of chaos, learning not to panic-this is the spiritual path.
PEMA CHODRON

Certain Chaos Learning Path Spiritual Stick
Obstacles are our friends: they teach us where we’re stuck.
PEMA CHODRON

Friendship Obstacle Ourselves Stuck Teaching
By the way that we think and by the way that we believe in things, in that way our world is created.
PEMA CHODRON

Believe Creation Ourselves Thinking Way World
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.
PEMA CHODRON

Angry Disappoint Embarrassment Feeling Hold Irritation Jealous Moments Ourselves Teaching
Anything we experience, no matter how challenging, can become an open pathway to awakening.
PEMA CHODRON

Awake Challenge Experience Open Path Spiritual
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 CHODRON

Alive Awake Death Experience Human Live Man Moments Willing

Obstacles are our friends: they teach us where we’re stuck.

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Obstacles are our friends: they teach us where we’re stuck.

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