So many of us start along the spiritual path because we are suffering. But you must realize that for real healing to occur, there must first be deep compassion for yourself, especially the parts of yourself you dislike or consider ugly.
PEMA CHODRONTo 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.
More Pema Chodron Quotes
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Openness doesn’t come from resisting our fears but rather from getting to know them well.
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Appreciate everything, even the ordinary. Especially the ordinary.
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Never give up on yourself. Then you will never give up on others.
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Resisting what is happening is a major cause of suffering.
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I can’t overestimate the importance of accepting ourselves exactly as we are right now, not as we wish we were or think we ought to be.
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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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Let your curiosity be greater than your fear.
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Things falling apart is a kind of testing and also a kind of healing.
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Obstacles are our friends: they teach us where we’re stuck.
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There’s nothing more important on our spiritual path than developing gentleness to oneself.
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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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Sticking with that uncertainty, getting the knack of relaxing in the midst of chaos, learning not to panic-this is the spiritual path.
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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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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.
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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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