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The truth you believe and cling to makes you unavailable to hear anything new.

Pema Chodron

When things fall apart in your life, you feel as if your whole world is crumbling. But actually it’s your fixed identity that’s crumbling. And as Chögyam Trungpa used to tell us, that’s cause for celebration.
PEMA CHODRON

Celebration Fall Identity Life World 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
Obstacles are our friends: they teach us where we’re stuck.
PEMA CHODRON

Friendship Obstacle Ourselves Stuck Teaching
Treat yourself as your own beloved child.
PEMA CHODRON

Children Love Self Treat 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
If you follow your heart, you’re going to find that it is often extremely inconvenient.
PEMA CHODRON

Heart Inspirational Yourself
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
We 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.
PEMA CHODRON

Choice Circumstance Hard Kind Life Open Scare
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
In meditation, you learn how to get out of your own way long enough for there to be room for your wisdom to manifest.
PEMA CHODRON

Enough Learning Manifestation Medication Way Wisdom Yourself
The future is completely open and we are writing it moment to moment.
PEMA CHODRON

Future Moments Open Writing
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
Usually we think that brave people have no fear. The truth is that they are intimate with fear.
PEMA CHODRON

Brave Courage Fear Inspirational People Thinking
Feeling irritated, restless, afraid, and hopeless is a reminder to listen more carefully.
PEMA CHODRON

Care Feeling Hope Irritation Listening Reminder
It isn’t the things that are happening to us that cause us to suffer, it’s what we say to ourselves about the things that are happening. The truth you believe and cling to makes you unavailable to hear anything new.
PEMA CHODRON

Believe Suffering Truth Yourself
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

The truth you believe and cling to makes you unavailable to hear anything new.

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The truth you believe and cling to makes you unavailable to hear anything new.

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