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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

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

Believe Hold On Truth Yourself
Feel the feelings and drop the story.
PEMA CHODRON

Feeling One Liner
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
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
Anything we experience, no matter how challenging, can become an open pathway to awakening.
PEMA CHODRON

Awake Challenge Experience Open Path Spiritual
Since death is certain and the time of death is uncertain, what is the most important thing?
PEMA CHODRON

Certain Death Important Philosophy Time
Nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know.
PEMA CHODRON

Need Spiritual Teaching Wisdom
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
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
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
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.
PEMA CHODRON

Attention Fact Heart Person Shout Stand Yourself
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
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.
PEMA CHODRON

Acceptance Important Myself Right Thinking
You are the sky. Everything else – it’s just the weather.
PEMA CHODRON

Sky Yourself
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

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.

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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Pema Chodron Quotes