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Holding On To Beliefs Limits Our Experience Of Life. That Doesn't Mean That Beliefs Or Ideas Or Thinking Is A Problem; The Stubborn Attitude Of Having To Have Things Be A Particular Way, Grasping On To Our Beliefs And Thoughts, All These Cause The Problems. To Put It Simply, Using Your Belief System This Way Creates A Situation In Which You Choose To Be Blind Instead Of Being Able To See, To Be Deaf Instead Of Being Able To Hear, To Be Dead Rather Than Alive, Asleep Rather Than Awake.

-Pema Chodron

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Holding On To Beliefs

Pema Chodron

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Holding On To Beliefs Limits Our Experience Of Life. That Doesn't Mean That Beliefs Or Ideas Or Thinking Is A Problem; The Stubborn Attitude Of Having To Have Things Be A Particular Way, Grasping On To Our Beliefs And Thoughts, All These Cause The Problems. To Put It Simply, Using Your Belief System This Way Creates A Situation In Which You Choose To Be Blind Instead Of Being Able To See, To Be Deaf Instead Of Being Able To Hear, To Be Dead Rather Than Alive, Asleep Rather Than Awake.

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Sometimes We Find That We Like Our Thoughts So Much That We Don't Want To Let Them Go.

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Something Better

Come Back To Square One, Just The Minimum Bare Bones. Relaxing With The Present Moment, Relaxing With Hopelessness, Relaxing With Death, Not Resisting The Fact That Things End, That Things Pass, That Things Have No Lasting Substance, That Everything Is Changing All The Time-that Is The Basic Message.

We Can Stop Struggling With What Occurs And See Its True Face Without Calling It The Enemy. It Helps To Remember That Our Spiritual Practice Is Not About Accomplishing Anything - Not About Winning Or Losing - But About Ceasing To Struggle And Relaxing As It Is. That Is What We Are Doing When We Sit Down To Meditate. That Attitude Spreads Into The Rest Of Our Lives.

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

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Meditation Practice

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New Opportunity

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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.

I Equate Ego With Trying To Figure Everything Out Instead Of Going With The Flow. That Closes Your Heart And Your Mind To The Person Or Situation That's Right In Front Of You, And You Miss So Much.

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According To The Buddhist Belief, You Can Go On And On Indefinitely, So You See Your Life As Just A Brief Moment In Time.

How Will We Experience The World A Month, A Year, Or Five Years From Now? Will We Be Even Angrier, More Grasping And Fearful, Or Will Some Shift Have Occurred? This Depends Entirely On The Tendencies We Reinforce Today.

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

Feel The Feelings And Drop The Story.

We Can Gradually Drop Our Ideals Of Who We Think We Ought To Be, Or Who We Think We Want To Be, Or Who We Think Other People Think We Want To Be Or Ought To Be.

What If Rather Than Being Disheartened By The Ambiguity, The Uncertainty Of Life, We Accepted It And Relaxed Into It?

Uncertainty Of Life

We Are Undoing A Pattern... It's The Human Pattern: We Project Onto The World A Zillion Possibilities Of Attaining Resolution.

All Ego Really Is, Is Our Opinions, Which We Take To Be Solid, Real, And The Absolute Truth About How Things Are.

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

There's Something Delicious About Finding Fault With Something. And That Can Be Including Finding Fault With One's Self, You Know?

Patience Takes Courage. It Is Not An Ideal State Of Calm. In Fact, When We Practice Patience We Will See Our Agitation Far More Clearly.

Usually We Regard Loneliness As An Enemy. Heartache Is Not Something We Choose To Invite In. It's Restless And Pregnant And Hot With The Desire To Escape And Find Something Or Someone To Keep Us Company. When We Can Rest In The Middle, We Begin To Have A Nonthreatening Relationship With Loneliness, A Relaxing And Cooling Loneliness That Completely Turns Our Usual Fearful Patterns Upside Down.

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.

Compassion Practice Is Daring. It Involves Learning To Relax And Allowing Ourselves To Move Gently Toward What Scares Us.

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.

When We Practice Generating Compassion, We Can Expect To Experience Our Fear Of Pain. Compassion Practice Is Daring. It Involves Learning To Relax And Allow Ourselves To Move Gently Toward What Scares Us. The Trick To Doing This Is To Stay With Emotional Distress Without Tightening Into Aversion, To Let Fear Soften Us Rather Than Harden Into Resistance.

We're Afraid That This Anger Or Sorrow Or Loneliness Is Going To Last Forever... Instead, Acting It Out Is What Makes It Last.

While We Are Sitting In Meditation, We Are Simply Exploring Humanity And All Of Creation In The Form Of Ourselves. We Can Become The World's Greatest Experts On Anger, Jealousy, And Self-deprecatio N, As Well As On Joyfulness, Clarity, And Insight. Everything That Human Beings Feel, We Feel. We Can Become Extremely Wise And Sensitive To All Of Humanity And The Whole Universe Simply By Knowing Ourselves, Just As We Are.

The Future Is Completely Open And We Are Writing It Moment To Moment.

Live In The Moment

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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.

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There's A Reason You Can Learn From Everything: You Have Basic Wisdom, Basic Intelligence, And Basic Goodness.

Words Of Wisdom

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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.

So War And Peace Start In The Human Heart. Whether That Heart Is Open Or Whether That Heart Closes Has Global Implications.

We Think That By Protecting Ourselves From Suffering, We Are Being Kind To Ourselves. The Truth Is We Only Become More Fearful, More Hardened And More Alienated. We Experience Ourselves As Being Separate From The Whole. This Separateness Becomes Like A Prison For Us - A Prison That Restricts Us To Our Personal Hopes And Fears, And To Caring Only For The People Nearest To Us. Curiously Enough, If We Primarily Try To Shield Ourselves From Discomfort, We Suffer. Yet, When We Don't Close Off, When We Let Our Hearts Break, We Discover Our Kinship With All Beings.

The Essence Of Bravery Is Being Without Self-deception.

Feeling Irritated, Restless, Afraid, And Hopeless Is A Reminder To Listen More Carefully.

There Comes A Time When The Bubble Of Ego Is Popped And You Can’t Get The Ground Back For An Extended Period Of Time. Those Times, When You Absolutely Cannot Get It Back Together, Are The Most Rich And Powerful Times In Our Lives.

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.

What's Encouraging About Meditation Is That, Even If We Shut Down, We Can No Longer Shut Down In Ignorance. We See Very Clearly That We're Closing Off. That In Itself Begins To Illuminate The Darkness Of Ignorance.

Meditation Practice

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.

We Don’t Sit In Meditation To Become Good Meditators. We Sit In Meditation So That We’ll Be More Awake In Our Lives.

We Work On Ourselves In Order To Help Others, But Also We Help Others In Order To Work On Ourselves.

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.

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.

Most Spiritual Experiences Begin With Suffering. They Begin With Groundlessness. They Begin When The Rug Has Been Pulled Out From Under Us.

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.

Compassion Isn't Some Kind Of Self-improvement Project Or Ideal That We're Trying To Live Up To. Having Compassion Starts And Ends With Having Compassion For All Those Unwanted Parts Of Ourselves, All Those Imperfections That We Don't Even Want To Look At.

Don't Worry About Achieving. Don't Worry About Perfection. Just Be There Each Moment As Best You Can. When You Realize You've Wandered Off Again, Simply Very Lightly Acknowledge That. This Light Touch Is The Golden Key To Reuniting With Our Openness.

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.

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

When You Have Made Good Friends With Yourself, Your Situation Will Be More Friendly Too.

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.

The Real Thing That We Renounce Is The Tenacious Hope That We Could Be Saved From Being Who We Are.

To Put It Concisely, We Suffer When We Resist The Noble And Irrefutable Truth Of Impermanence And Death.

Inner #‎ Peace Begins The Moment You Choose Not To Allow Another Person Or Event To Control Your #‎ Emotions

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.

All Situations Teach You, And Often It's The Tough Ones That Teach You Best.

If You're Invested In Security And Certainty, You Are On The Wrong Planet.

Life Is Glorious, But Life Is Also Wretched. It Is Both...life Is Glorious, But Life Is Also Wretched. It Is Both.

It Is Possible To Move Through The Drama Of Our Lives Without Believing So Earnestly In The Character That We Play.

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.

Each Time You Stay Present With Fear And Uncertainty, You're Letting Go Of A Habitual Way Of Finding Security And Comfort.

Holding On To Anything Blocks Wisdom.

Our Patterns Are Well Established, Seductive, And Comforting. Just Wanting For Them To Be Ventilated Isn't Enough. Those Of Us Who Struggle With This Know.

Holding On To Beliefs Limits Our Experience Of Life. That Doesn't Mean That Beliefs Or Ideas Or Thinking Is A Problem; The Stubborn Attitude Of Having To Have Things Be A Particular Way, Grasping On To Our Beliefs And Thoughts, All These Cause The Problems. To Put It Simply, Using Your Belief System This Way Creates A Situation In Which You Choose To Be Blind Instead Of Being Able To See, To Be Deaf Instead Of Being Able To Hear, To Be Dead Rather Than Alive, Asleep Rather Than 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.

Enlightenment Is A Direct Experience With Reality.

The Painful Thing Is That When We Buy Into Disapproval,we Are Practicing Disapproval. When We Buy Into Harshness,we Are Practicing Harshness.

Difficult People Are The Greatest Teachers.

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

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

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.

Usually We Think That Brave People Have No Fear. The Truth Is That They Are Intimate With Fear.

Many People Hope A Spiritual Practice Will Let Them Avoid What They Are Ashamed Of. But When You Hide Something From Yourself, You Are Going To Project It Onto Your World. You Continually Find It In Others And It Becomes The Source Of Prejudices And Dogmatic Views. On Top Of That, You Feel Bad About Yourself, Because You Aren't The Loving, Open-minded, "spiritual" Person You'd Like To Be.

Things Falling Apart Is A Kind Of Testing And Also A Kind Of Healing.

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.

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

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William Congreve

Charles Lindbergh

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