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As For Our Inner Level Of Obstacle, Perhaps The Only Enemy We Have Is That We Don't Like The Way Reality Is Now And Therefore Wish It Would Go Away Fast. But What We Need To Acknowledge Is That Nothing Ever Goes Away Until It Has Taught Us What We Need To Know.

-Pema Chodron

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As For Our Inner

Pema Chodron

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As For Our Inner Level Of Obstacle, Perhaps The Only Enemy We Have Is That We Don't Like The Way Reality Is Now And Therefore Wish It Would Go Away Fast. But What We Need To Acknowledge Is That Nothing Ever Goes Away Until It Has Taught Us What We Need To Know.

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We Can Begin To Open Our Hearts To Others When We Have No Hope Of Getting Anything Back. We Just Do It For Its Own Sake.

It's Not A Terrible Thing That We Feel Fear When Faced With The Unknown. It Is Part Of Being Alive, Something We All Share.

We Are Not Human Beings Having A Spiritual Experience, We Are Spiritual Beings Having A Human Experience And Infinite Love Is The Only Truth; Everything Else Is An Illusion.

Positive Thinking

Don’t Get Caught Up In Hopes Of What You’ll Achieve And How Good Your Situation Will Be Some Day In The Future. What You Do Right Now Is What Matters.

In A Nutshell, When Life Is Pleasant, Think Of Others. When Life Is A Burden, Think Of Others.

Buddhism Itself Is All About Empowering Yourself, Not About Getting What You Want.

Getting What You Want

The Essence Of Our Whole Path Is In That Place Of Discomfort, And What Do We Do With It?

The Teacher Will Never Give Up On The Student No Matter How Mixed Up He Or She Might Be

By Not Knowing, Not Hoping To Know And Not Acting Like We Know What's Happening, We Begin To Access Our Inner Strength.

Every Small Problem Most Likely Stems From The Same Root As Large Problems, And So There Is No Need To Always Go Deep. One Can Use Anything For The Therapeutic Process And/if This Link Is Made.

Instead Of Asking Ourselves, 'how Can I Find Security And Happiness?' We Could Ask Ourselves, 'can I Touch The Center Of My Pain? Can I Sit With Suffering, Both Yours And Mine, Without Trying To Make It Go Away? Can I Stay Present To The Ache Of Loss Or Disgrace-disapp Ointment In All Its Many Forms-and Let It Open Me?' This Is The Trick.

Without Giving Up Hope—that There’s Somewhere Better To Be, That There’s Someone Better To Be—we Will Never Relax With Where We Are Or Who We Are.

Underneath Our Ordinary Lives, Underneath All The Talking We Do, All The Moving We Do, All The Thoughts In Our Minds, There's A Fundamental Groundlessness. It's There Bubbling Along All The Time. We Experience It As Restlessness And Edginess. We Experience It As Fear. It Motivates Passion, Aggression, Ignorance, Jealousy, And Pride, But We Never Get Down To The Essence Of It.

The Buddha Taught That We're Not Actually In Control, Which Is A Pretty Scary Idea. But When You Let Things Be As They Are, You Will Be A Much Happier, More Balanced, Compassionate Person.

We Cannot Be Present And Run Our Story-line At The Same Time.

Everything In Our Lives Has The Potential To Wake Us Up Or Put Us To Sleep. Allowing It To Awaken Us Is Up To Us.

Anything We Experience, No Matter How Challenging, Can Become An Open Pathway To Awakening.

Trying To Run Away Is Never The Answer To Being A Fully Human. Running Away From The Immediacy Of Our Experience Is Like Preferring Death To Life.

Trying To Change Ourselves Doesn't Work In The Long Run Because We're Resisting Our Own Energy. Self-improvemen T Can Have Temporary Results, But Lasting Transformation Occurs Only When We Honor Ourselves As The Source Of Wisdom And Compassion.

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To Be Fully Alive, Fully Human, And Completely Awake Is To Be Continually Thrown Out Of The Nest.

Clarity And Decisiveness Come From The Willingness To Slow Down, To Listen To And Look At What’s Happening.

If You Ask Why We Meditate, I Would Say It's So We Can Become More Flexible And Tolerant To The Present Moment.

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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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As Our Kindness For Ourselves Grows, So Does Our Kindness For Other People.

You Are The Sky. Everything Else - It’s Just The Weather.

The Very First Noble Truth Of The Buddha Points Out That Suffering Is Inevitable For Human Beings As Long As We Believe That Things Last—that They Don’t Disintegrate, That They Can Be Counted On To Satisfy Our Hunger For Security.

For One Day, Or For One Day For A Week, Refrain From Something You Habitually Do To Run Away, To Escape. Pick Something Concrete, Such As Overeating Or Excessive Sleeping Or Overworking Or Spending Too Much Time Texting Or Checking E-mails. Make A Commitment To Yourself To Gently And Compassionately Work With Refraining From This Habit For This One Day. Really Commit To It. Do This With The Intention That It Will Put You In Touch With The Underlying Anxiety Or Uncertainty That You've Been Avoiding. Do It And See What You Discover.

Compassion Becomes Real When We Recognize Our Shared Humanity.

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Hell Is Just Resistance To Life.

Even If You Don't Feel Appreciation, Just Look. Feel What You Feel; Take An Interest And Be Curious.

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There Isn't Anything Except Your Own Life That Can Be Used As Ground For Your Spiritual Practice. Spiritual Practice Is Your Life, Twenty-four Hours A Day.

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We Can Stop Thinking That Good Practice Is When It’s Smooth And Calm, And Bad Practice Is When It’s Rough And Dark. If We Can Hold It All In Our Hearts, Then We Can Make A Proper Cup Of Tea.

The Sad Part Is That All We're Trying To Do Is Not Feel That Underlying Uneasiness. The Sadder Part Is That We Proceed In Such A Way That The Uneasiness Only Gets Worse. The Message Here Is That The Only Way To Ease Our Pain Is To Experience It Fully. Learn To Stay. Learn To Stay With Uneasiness, Learn To Stay With The Tightening, Learn To Stay With The Itch And Urge Of Shenpa, So That The Habitual Chain Reaction Doesn't Continue To Rule Our Lives, And The Patterns That We Consider Unhelpful Don't Keep Getting Stronger As The Days And Months And Years Go By.

Knowing Pain Is A Very Important Ingredient Of Being There For Another Person.

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Just Where You Are-that's The Place To Start!

The Still Lake Without Ripples Is An Image Of Our Minds At Ease, So Full Of Unlimited Friendliness For All The Junk At The Bottom Of The Lake That We Don't Feel The Need To Churn Up The Waters Just To Avoid Looking At What's There.

Share The Wealth. Be Generous With Your Joy. Give Away What You Most Want. Be Generous With Your Insights And Delights.

This Is The Tendency Of All Living Things: To Avoid Pain And To Cling To Pleasure.

When We Feel Left Out, Inadequate, Or Lonely, Can We Take A Warrior’s Perspective And Contact Bodhichitta?

When We Struggle Agains Our Energy We Reject The Source Of Wisdom. Anger Without The Fixation Is None Other Than Clear-seeing Wisdom. Pride Without Fixation Is Experienced As Equanimity. The Energy Of Passion When It's Free Of Grasping Is Wisdom That Sees All The Angles.

When You Refrain From Habitual Thoughts And Behavior, The Uncomfortable Feelings Will Still Be There. They Don’t Magically Disappear. Over The Years, I’ve Come To Call Resting With The Discomfort “the Detox Period,” Because When You Don’t Act On Your Habitual Patterns, It’s Like Giving Up An Addiction. You’re Left With The Feelings You Were Trying To Escape. The Practice Is To Make A Wholehearted Relationship With That

As Long As Our Orientation Is Toward Perfection Or Success, We Will Never Learn About Unconditional Friendship With Ourselves, Nor Will We Find Compassion.

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. They Teach Us To Perk Up And Lean In When We Feel We’d Rather Collapse And Back Away. They’re Like Messengers That Show Us, With Terrifying Clarity, Exactly Where We’re Stuck. This Very Moment Is The Perfect Teacher, And, Lucky For Us, It’s With Us Wherever We Are.

Letting There Be Room For Not Knowing Is The Most Important Thing Of All. When There's A Big Disappointment, We Don't Know If That's The End Of The Story. It May Just Be The Beginning Of A Great Adventure. Life Is Like That. We Don't Know Anything. We Call Something Bad; We Call It Good. But Really We Just Don't Know.

No One Ever Tells Us To Stop Running Away From Fear...the Advice We Usually Get Is To Sweeten It Up, Smooth It Over, Take A Pill, Or Distract Ourselves, But By All Means Make It Go Away. (5)

In Practicing Meditation, We're Not Trying To Live Up To Some Kind Of Ideal -- Quite The Opposite. We're Just Being With Our Experience, Whatever It Is.

Whatever Is Happening Is The Path To Enlightenment.

Path To Enlightenment

Don’t Worry About Achieving. Don’t Worry About Perfection. Just Be There Each Moment As Best You Can.

When You Open The Door And Invite In All Sentient Beings As Your Guests, You Have To Drop Your Agenda.

Surrendering, Letting Go Of Possessiveness, And Complete Nonattachment-all Are Synonyms For Accumulating Merit.

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.

A Further Sign Of Health Is That We Don't Become Undone By Fear And Trembling, But We Take It As A Message That It's Time To Stop Struggling And Look Directly At What's Threatening Us.

Each Of Us Has A "soft Spot": The Place In Our Experience Where We Feel Vulnerable And Tender. This Soft Spot Is Inherent In Appreciation And Love, And It Is Equally Inherent In Pain.

We Are One Blink Of An Eye Away From Being Fully Awake

Although It Is Embarrassing And Painful, It Is Very Healing To Stop Hiding From Yourself. It Is Healing To Know All The Ways That You’re Sneaky, All The Ways That You Hide Out, All The Ways That You Shut Down, Deny, Close Off, Criticize People, All Your Weird Little Ways. You Can Know All Of That With Some Sense Of Humor And Kindness. By Knowing Yourself, You’re Coming To Know Humanness Altogether. We Are All Up Against These Things. We Are All In This Together.

Ego Could Be Defined As Whatever Covers Up Basic Goodness. From An Experiential Point Of View, What Is Ego Covering Up? It's Covering Up Our Experience Of Just Being Here, Just Fully Being Where We Are, So That We Can Relate With The Immediacy Of Our Experience. Egolessness Is A State Of Mind That Has Complete Confidence In The Sacredness Of The World. It Is Unconditional Well Being, Unconditional Joy That Includes All The Different Qualities Of Our Experience.

One Of The Deepest Habitual Patterns That We Have Is To Feel That Now Is Not Enough.

It Is Possible To Move Through The Drama Of Our Lives Without Believing So Earnestly In The Character That We Play. That We Take Ourselves So Seriously, That We Are So Absurdly Important In Our Own Minds, Is A Problem For Us. We Feel Justified In Being Annoyed With Everything. We Feel Justified In Denigrating Ourselves Or In Feeling That We Are More Clever Than Other People. Self-importance Hurts Us, Limiting Us To The Narrow World Of Our Likes And Dislikes. We End Up Bored To Death With Ourselves And Our World. We End Up Never Satisfied.

We See How Beautiful And Wonderful And Amazing Things Are, And We See How Caught Up We Are. It Isn’t That One Is The Bad Part And One Is The Good Part, But That It’s A Kind Of Interesting, Smelly, Rich, Fertile Mess Of Stuff. When It’s All Mixed Up Together, It’s Us: Humanness.

One Way To Practice Staying Present Is To Simply Sit Still For A While And Listen. For One Minute, Listen To The Sounds Close To You. For One Minute, Listen To The Sounds At A Distance. Just Listen Attentively.

Next, Feel Your Heart, Literally Placing Your Hand On Your Chest If You Find That Helpful. This Is A Way Of Accepting Yourself Just As You Are In That Moment, A Way Of Saying, "this Is My Experience Right Now, And It's Okay." Then Go Into The Next Moment Without Any Agenda.

When We Are Willing To Stay Even A Moment With Uncomfortable Energy, We Gradually Learn Not To Fear It.

While We Are Sitting In Meditation, We Are Simply Exploring Humanity And All Of Creation In The Form Of Ourselves.

Learning How To Be Kind To Ourselves, Learning How To Respect Ourselves, Is Important. The Reason It's Important Is That, Fundamentally, When We Look Into Our Own Hearts And Begin To Discover What Is Confused And What Is Brilliant, What Is Bitter And What Is Sweet, It Isn't Just Ourselves That We're Discovering. We're Discovering The Universe.

What You Do For Yourself, Any Gesture Of Kindness, Any Gesture Of Gentleness, Any Gesture Of Honesty And Clear Seeing Toward Yourself, Will Affect How You Experience Your World. In Fact, It Will Transform How You Experience The World. What You Do For Yourself, You’re Doing For Others, And What You Do For Others, You’re Doing For Yourself.

Remind Yourself, In Whatever Way Is Personally Meaningful, That It Is Not In Your Best Interest To Reinforce Thoughts And Feelings Of Unworthiness. Even If You've Already Taken The Bait And Feel The Familiar Pull Of Self-denigration, Marshal Your Intelligence, Courage, And Humor In Order To Turn The Tide. Ask Yourself: Do I Want To Strengthen What I'm Feeling Now? Do I Want To Cut Myself Off From My Basic Goodness? Remind Yourself That Your Fundamental Nature Is Unconditionally Open And Free.

Every Moment Is Unique, Unknown, Completely Fresh.

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.

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.

Mindfulness Is Loving All The Details Of Our Lives, And Awareness Is The Natural Thing That Happens: Life Begins To Open Up, And You Realize That You're Always Standing At The Center Of The World.

Welcome The Present Moment As If You Had Invited It. Why? Because It Is All We Ever Have.

All The Terrible Things We Do To Ourselves And Others From Alcoholism To Character Assignation To Abuse To Murder Come From One Cause: The Inability To Stay Present With An Uncomfortable Feeling In The Body And Seek Short-term Relief.

The Biggest Obstacle To Taking A Bigger Perspective On Life Is That Our Emotions Capture And Blind Us.

We Insist On Being Someone, With A Capital S. We Get Security From Defining Ourselves As Worthless Or Worthy, Superior Or Inferior. We Waste Precious Time Exaggerating Or Romanticizing Or Belittling Ourselves With A Complacent Surety That Yes, That’s Who We Are. We Mistake The Openness Of Our Being—the Inherent Wonder And Surprise Of Each Moment—for A Solid, Irrefutable Self. Because Of This Misunderstanding, We Suffer.

If We're Willing To Give Up Hope That Insecurity And Pain Can Be Eliminated, Then We Can Have The Courage To Relax With The Groundlessness Of Our Situation. This Is The First Step On The Path.

The Painful Thing Is That When We Buy Into Disapproval, We Are Practicing Disapproval. When We Buy Into Harshness, We Are Practicing Harshness. The More We Do It, The Stronger These Qualities Become. How Sad It Is That We Become So Expert At Causing Harm To Ourselves And Others. The Trick Then Is To Practice Gentleness And Letting Go. We Can Learn To Meet Whatever Arises With Curiosity And Not Make It Such A Big Deal.

Nobody Else Can Really Begin To Sort Out For You What To Accept And What To Reject In Terms Of What Wakes You Up And What Makes You Fall Asleep. No One Else Can Really Sort Out For You What To Accept - What Opens Up Your World - And What To Reject - What Seems To Keep You Going Round And Round In Some Kind Of Repetitive Misery.

Since Death Is Certain And The Time Of Death Is Uncertain, What Is The Most Important Thing?

The Next Step Is To Learn To Communicate With The People That You Feel Are Causing Your Pain And Misery- Not To Learn How To Prove Them Wrong And Yourself Right But How To Communicate From The Heart.

Are You Experiencing Restlessness? Stay! Are Fear And Loathing Out Of Control? Stay! Aching Knees And Throbbing Back? Stay! What's For Lunch? Stay! I Can't Stand This Another Minute! Stay!

Being Satisfied With What We Already Have Is A Magical Golden Key To Being Alive In A Full, Unrestricted, And Inspired Way.

Right Down There In The Thick Of Things, We Discover The Love That Will Not Die.

People Get Into A Heavy-duty Sin And Guilt Trip, Feeling That If Things Are Going Wrong, That Means That They Did Something Bad And They Are Being Punished. That's Not The Idea At All.

We Think That The Point Is To Pass The Test Or To Overcome The Problem, But The Truth Is That Things Don't Really Get Solved. They Come Together And They Fall Apart.

If You’re Aggressive In Your Dealings, That’s How You’ll Be Regarded In The World. You Might Smile And Give Generously, But If You Frequently Explode In Anger, People Never Feel Comfortable In Your Presence And You’ll Never Have Peace Of Mind.

Awareness Is The Key. Do We See The Stories That We're Telling Ourselves And Question Their Validity?

The Happiness We Seek Cannot Be Found Through Grasping, Trying To Hold On To Things. It Cannot Be Found Through Getting Serious And Uptight About Wanting Things To Go In The Direction We Think Will Bring Happiness. We Are Always Taking Hold Of The Wrong End Of The Stick. The Point Is That The Happiness We Seek Is Already Here And It Will Be Found Through Relaxation And Letting Go Rather Than Through Struggle.

One Can Appreciate & Celebrate Each Moment — There’s Nothing More Sacred. There’s Nothing More Vast Or Absolute. In Fact, There’s Nothing More!

The Most Heartbreaking Thing Of All Is How We Cheat Ourselves Of The Present Moment.

Allow Situations In Your Life To Become Your Teacher.

Compassion For Others Begins With Kindness To Ourselves.

Pain Is Not A Punishment; Pleasure Is Not A Reward.

Compassionate Action Starts With Seeing Yourself When You Start To Make Yourself Right And When You Start To Make Yourself Wrong. At That Point You Could Just Contemplate The Fact That There Is A Larger Alternative To Either Of Those, A More Tender, Shaky Kind Of Place Where You Could Live.

All The Wars, All The Hatred, All The Ignorance In The World Come Out Of Being So Invested In Our Opinions.

If We Learn To Open Our Hearts, Anyone, Including The People Who Drive Us Crazy, Can Be Our Teacher.

Inspirational Love

As Buddhism Moved From One Culture To Another, It Always Adapted.

Do I Prefer To Grow Up And Relate To Life Directly, Or Do I Choose To Live And Die In Fear?

The Most Important Aspect Of Being On A Spiritual Path May Be To Just Keep Moving.

Meditation Is About Seeing Clearly The Body That We Have, The Mind That We Have, The Domestic Situation That We Have, The Job That We Have, And The People Who Are In Our Lives. It's About Seeing How We React To All These Things. It's Seeing Our Emotions And Thoughts Just As They Are Right Now, In This Very Moment, In This Very Room, On This Very Seat. It's About Not Trying To Make Them Go Away, Not Trying To Become Better Than We Are, But Just Seeing Clearly With Precision And Gentleness.

Tonglen Is A Way For You To Be With People Who Need You - Beginning With Yourself.

If You Follow Your Heart, You're Going To Find That It Is Often Extremely Inconvenient.

Follow Your Heart

Each Person's Life Is Like A Mandala - A Vast, Limitless Circle. We Stand In The Center Of Our Own Circle, And Everything We See, Hear And Think Forms The Mandala Of Our Life ... Everything That Shows Up In Your Mandala Is A Vehicle For Your Awakening.

Every Day Is A New Opportunity To Work With What You Have Inside Toward Enlightenment.

New Opportunity

The Point Is That Our True Nature Is Not Some Ideal That We Have To Live Up To. It's Who We Are Right Now, And That's What We Can Make Friends With And Celebrate.

Honesty Without Kindness, Humor, And Goodheartedness Can Be Just Mean.

The Idea Is To Develop Sympathy For Your Own Confusion.

There's Nothing More Important On Our Spiritual Path Than Developing Gentleness To Oneself.

The Way I Regard Those Who Hurt Me Today Will Affect How I Experience The World In The Future. In Any Encounter, We Have A Choice: We Can Strengthen Our Resentment Or Our Understanding And Empathy. We Can Widen The Gap Between Ourselves And Others Or Lessen It.

Everything Is Fresh, The Essence Of Realization.

Deep Down In The Human Spirit, There Is A Reservoir Of Courage. It Is Always Available, Always Waiting To Be Discovered.

The Idea Of Karma Is That You Continually Get The Teaching That You Need To Open Your Heart.

The First Noble Truth Of The Buddha Is That When We Feel Suffering, It Doesn’t Mean That Something Is Wrong. What A Relief.

Welcome The Present Moment As If You Had Invited It. It Is All We Ever Have, So We Night As Well Work With It Rather Than Struggling Against It. We Might As Well Make It Our Friend And Teacher Rather Than Our Enemy.

The Central Question Of A Warrior's Training Is Not How We Avoid Uncertainty And Fear But How We Relate To Discomfort.

In The Most Ordinary Terms, Egolessness Is A Flexible Identity. It Manifests As Inquisitiveness , As Adaptability, As Humor, As Playfulness. It Is Our Capacity To Relax With Not Knowing, Not Figuring Everything Out, With Not Being At All Sure Who We Are, Or Who Anyone Else Is, Either.

Tonglen Practice Begins To Dissolve The Illusion That Each Of Us Is Alone With This Personal Suffering That No One Else Can Understand.

The Root Of Suffering Is Resisting The Certainty That No Matter What The Circumstances, Uncertainty Is All We Truly Have.

Gloriousness And Wretchedness Need Each Other. One Inspires Us, The Other Softens Us.

It's Also Helpful To Realize That This Very Body That We Have, That's Sitting Right Here Right Now... With Its Aches And It Pleasures... Is Exactly What We Need To Be Fully Human, Fully Awake, Fully Alive.

Enlightenment Is A Direct Experience With Reality.

Until We Stop Clinging To The Concept Of Good And Evil, The World Will Continue To Manifest As Friendly Goddesses And Harmful Demons.

Peace Isn’t An Experience Free Of Challenges, Free Of Rough And Smooth, It’s An Experience That’s Expansive Enough To Include All That Arises Without Feeling Threatened.

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.

Sticking With Uncertainty Is How We Learn To Relax In The Midst Of Chaos, How We Learn To Be Cool When The Ground Beneath Us Suddenly Disappears. We Can Bring Ourselves Back To The Spiritual Path Countless Times Every Day Simply By Exercising Our Willingness To Rest In The Uncertainty Of The Present Moment—over And Over Again.

If Your Everyday Practice Is Open To All Your Emotions, To All The People You Meet, To All The Situations You Encounter, Without Closing Down, Trusting That You Can Do That - Then That Will Take You Are Far As You Can Go. And Then You'll Understand All The Teachings That Anyone Has Ever Taught.

A Heartfelt Sense Of Aspiring Cuts Through Negativity About Yourself; It Cuts Through The Heavy Trips You Lay On Yourself.

Ego Is Like A Room Of Your Own, A Room With A View With The Temperature And The Smells And The Music That You Like. You Want It Your Own Way. You'd Just Like To Have A Little Peace, You'd Like To Have A Little Happiness, You Know, Just Gimme A Break.

We Give It Up And Just Look Directly With Compassion And Humor At Who We Are. Then Loneliness Is No Threat And Heartache, No Punishment.

When We Protect Ourselves So We Won't Feel Pain, That Protection Becomes Like Armor, Like Armor That Imprisons The Softness Of Of The Heart.

Meditation Practice Isn't About Trying To Throw Ourselves Away And Become Something Better. It's About Befriending Who We Are Already.

Meditation And Yoga

All You Need To Know Is That The Future Is Wide Open And You Are About To Create It By What You Do.

When You Begin To Touch Your Heart Or Let Your Heart Be Touched, You Begin To Discover That It's Bottomless.

Opening Our Hearts

The Next Time You Encounter Fear, Consider Yourself Lucky. This Is Where The Courage Comes In. Usually We Think That Brave People Have No Fear. The Truth Is That They Are Intimate With Fear. When I Was First Married, My Husband Said I Was One Of The Bravest People He Knew. When I Asked Him Why, He Said Because I Was A Complete Coward But Went Ahead And Did Things Anyhow.

Unconditional Good Heart Toward Others Is Not Even A Possibility Unless We Attend To Our Own Demons.

Meditation Accepts Us Just As We Are-in Both Our Tantrums And Our Bad Habits, In Our Love And Commitments And Happiness. It Allows Us To Have A More Flexible Identity Because We Learn To Accept Ourselves And All Of Our Human Experience With More Tenderness And Openness. We Learn To Accept The Present Moment With An Open Heart. Every Moment Is Incredibly Unique And Fresh, And When We Drop Into The Moment, As Meditation Allows Us To Do, We Learn How To Truly Taste This Tender And Mysterious Life That We Share Together.

By Becoming Intimate With How We Close Down And How We Open Up, We Awaken Our Unlimited Potential.

Unlimited Potential

Rather Than Going After Our Walls And Barriers With A Sledgehammer, We Pay Attention To Them. With Gentleness And Honesty, We Move Closer To Those Walls. We Touch Them And Smell Them And Get To Know Them Well. We Begin A Process Of Acknowledging Our Aversions And Our Cravings. We Become Familiar With The Strategies And Beliefs We Use To Build The Walls: What Are The Stories I Tell Myself? What Repels Me And What Attracts Me? We Start To Get Curious About What’s Going On.

Resistance To Unwanted Circumstances Has The Power To Keep Those Circumstances Alive And Well For A Very Long Time.

We Don’t Experience The World Fully Unless We Are Willing To Give Everything Away. Samaya Means Not Holding Anything Back, Not Preparing Our Escape Route, Not Looking For Alternatives, Not Thinking That There Is Ample Time To Do Things Later

Whatever You Are Doing, Take The Attitude Of Wanting It Directly Or Indirectly To Benefit Others. Take The Attitude Of Wanting It To Increase Your Experience Of Kinship With Your Fellow Beings.

At Least Once A Year, I Imagine That I Am About To Die. Looking Back As Truthfully As I Can At My Entire Life, I Give Full Attention To The Things I Wish Hadn’t Occurred. Recognizing These Mistakes Honestly But Without Self-recrimination, I Try To Rejoice In The Innate Wisdom That Allows Me To See So Bravely, And I Feel Compassion For How I So Frequently Messed Up. Then I Can Go Forward. The Future Is Wide Open, And What I Do With It Is Up To Me.

We Could Learn To Stop When The Sun Goes Down And When The Sun Comes Up. We Could Learn To Listen To The Wind; We Could Learn To Notice That It's Raining Or Snowing Or Hailing Or Calm. We Could Reconnect With The Weather That Is Ourselves, And We Could Realize That It's Sad. The Sadder It Is, And The Vaster It Is, The More Our Heart Opens. We Can Stop Thinking That Good Practice Is When It's Smooth And Calm, And Bad Practice Is When It's Rough And Dark. If We Can Hold It All In Our Hearts, Then We Can Make A Proper Cup Of Tea.

You Must Learn To Sit With The Restless, Painful Energy And Not Let The Momentum Pull You Under And Cause You To Do The Same Thing Over And Over That's Ruining Your Life And The Lives Of Those Around You.

If You Work With Your Mind, Instead Of Trying To Change Everything On The Outside, That's How Your Temper Will Cool Down.

Things Are As Bad And As Good As They Seem. There's No Need To Add Anything Extra.

At Some Point, We Realize That What We Do For Ourselves Benefits Others, And What We Do For Others Benefits Us.

Over Time, As The Thinking Mind Begins To Settle [through The Practice Of Meditation], We’ll Start To See Our Patterns And Habits Far More Clearly. Sometimes This Can Be A Painful Experience. 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. By Cultivating Nonjudgmental Openness To Ourselves And To Whatever Arises, To Our Surprise And Delight We Will Find Ourselves Genuinely Welcoming The Never-pin-downable Quality Of Life, Experiencing It As A Friend, A Teacher, And A Support, And No Longer As An Enemy.

Painful Experiences

This Very Moment Is The Perfect Teacher, And, Lucky For Us, It's With Us Wherever We Go.

We Spend All Our Energy And Waste Our Lives Trying To Re-create These Zones Of Safety, Which Are Always Falling Apart. That's The Essence Of Samsara - The Cycle Of Suffering That Comes From Continuing To Seek Happiness In All The Wrong Places.

Most Of Us Do Not Take These Situations As Teachings. We Automatically Hate Them. We Run Like Crazy. We Use All Kinds Of Ways To Escape - All Addictions Stem From This Moment When We Meet Our Edge And We Just Can't Stand It. We Feel We Have To Soften It, Pad It With Something, And We Become Addicted To Whatever It Is That Seems To Ease The Pain.

We Come To Realize That Other People's Welfare Is Just As Important As Our Own. In Helping Them, We Help Ourselves. In Helping Ourselves, We Help The World.

We Are Like Children Building A Sand Castle. We Embellish It With Beautiful Shells, Bits Of Driftwood, And Pieces Of Colored Glass. The Castle Is Ours, Off Limits To Others. We’re Willing To Attack If Others Threaten To Hurt It. Yet Despite All Our Attachment, We Know That The Tide Will Inevitably Come In And Sweep The Sand Castle Away. The Trick Is To Enjoy It Fully But Without Clinging, And When The Time Comes, Let It Dissolve Back Into The Sea.

The More We Witness Our Emotional Reactions And Understand How They Work, The Easier It Is To Refrain.

Sitting Meditation Gives Us A Way To Move Closer To Our Thoughts And Emotions And To Get In Touch With Our Bodies.

We Think That The Point Is To Pass The Test Or Overcome The Problem, But The Truth Is That Things Don't Really Get Solved. They Come Together And They Fall Apart. Then They Come Together Again And Fall Apart Again. It's Just Like That. The Healing Comes From Letting There Be Room For All Of This To Happen: Room For Grief, For Relief, For Misery, For Joy. (10)

True Compassion Does Not Come From Wanting To Help Out Those Less Fortunate Than Ourselves But From Realizing Our Kinship With All Beings.

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.

In Meditation, You Learn How To Get Out Of Your Own Way Long Enough For There To Be Room For Your Wisdom To Manifest

When Things Are Shaky And Nothing Is Working, We Might Realize That We Are On The Verge Of Something. We Might Realize That This Is A Very Vulnerable And Tender Place, And That Tenderness Can Go Either Way. We Can Shut Down And Feel Resentful Or We Can Touch In On That Throbbing Quality. (9)

When You Open Yourself To The Continually Changing, Impermanent, Dynamic Nature Of Your Own Being And Of Reality, You Increase Your Capacity To Love And Care About Other People And Your Capacity To Not Be Afraid. You're Able To Keep Your Eyes Open, Your Heart Open, And Your Mind Open. And You Notice When You Get Caught Up In Prejudice, Bias, And Aggression. You Develop An Enthusiasm For No Longer Watering Those Negative Seeds, From Now Until The Day You Die. And, You Begin To Think Of Your Life As Offering Endless Opportunities To Start To Do Things Differently.

When Things Fall Apart” And I Quote “life Is A Good Teacher And A Good Friend. Things Are Always In Transition, If We Could Only Realize It. Nothing Ever Sums Itself Up In The Way That We Like To Dream About. The Off-center, In-between State Is An Ideal Situation, A Situation In Which We Don't Get Caught And We Can Open Our Hearts And Minds Beyond Limit. It's A Very Tender, Nonaggressive, Open-ended State Of Affairs.

Treat Yourself As Your Own Beloved Child.

We're Not Trying To Be Something We Aren't; Rather, We're Reconnecting With Who We Are.

What You Do For Yourself, You're Doing For Others, And What You Do For Others, You're Doing For Yourself.

Doing For Others

Life's Work Is To Wake Up, To Let The Things That Enter Your Life Wake You Up Rather Than Put You To Sleep.

Sometimes People's Spiritual Ideas Become Fixed And They Use Them Against Those Who Don't Share Their Beliefs - In Effect, Becoming Fundamentalist. It's Very Dangerous - The Finger Of Righteous Indignation Pointing At Someone Who Is Identified As Bad Or Wrong.

You See, There Really Is No Separation Between You And Everyone Else.

When People Are Hurting, What They Really Need Is Someone Who Is Fully There For Them - Not Someone Who Is Condescending Or Officious. The Only Way For You To Be There For Them Is By Facing Your Fear Or Anger, Whatever Feelings Cause You To Shut Down.

Things Become Clear When There Is No Escape.

Meditation Is Not About Getting Out Of Ourselves Or Achieving Something Better. It Is About Getting In Touch With What You Already Are.

Something Better

You Build Inner Strength Through Embracing The Totality Of Your Experience, Both The Delightful Parts And The Difficult Parts.

In Meditation And In Our Daily Lives There Are Three Qualities That We Can Nurture, Cultivate, And Bring Out. We Already Possess These, But They Can Be Ripened: Precision, Gentleness, And The Ability To Let Go.

The Future Is The Result Of What We Do Right Now.

"be Grateful To Everyone" Is About Making Peace With The Aspects Of Ourselves That We Have Rejected... If We Were To Make A List Of People We Don't Like - People We Find Obnoxious, Threatening, Or Worthy Of Contempt - We Would Discover Much About Those Aspects Of Ourselves That We Can't Face... Other People Trigger The Karma That We Haven't Worked Out.

Awareness Is The Key. Do We See The Stories That We're Telling Ourselves And Question Their Validity? When We Are Distracted By Strong Emotion, Do We Remember That It Is Our Path? Can We Feel The Emotion And Breathe It Into Our Hearts For Ourselves And Everyone Else? If We Can Remember To Experiment Like This Even Occasionally, We Are Training As A Warrior. And When We Can't Practice When Distracted But Know We Can't, We Are Still Training Well. Never Underestimate The Power Of Compassionately Recognizing What's Going On.

Never Underestimate The Power Of Compassionately Recognizing What's Going On.

Never Underestimate

Only In An Open, Nonjudgmental Space Can We Acknowledge What We Are Feeling. Only In An Open Space Where We're Not All Caught Up In Our Own Version Of Reality Can We See And Hear And Feel Who Others Really Are, Which Allows Us To Be With Them And Communicate With Them Properly.

It's Helpful To Remind Yourself That Meditation Is About Opening And Relaxing With Whatever Arises, Without Picking And Choosing.

Meditation Practice

The Trick Is To Keep Exploring And Not Bail Out, Even When We Find Out That Something Is Not What We Thought.

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