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When Desire For A Certain Person's Attention Becomes An "i Have To Have" Kind Of Grasping, Then Identity Gets Organized Around Needing That And It Becomes Very Solid And Sticky. That Causes Suffering Because We're Not Inhabiting The Fullness Of Who We Are, We're Fixated And Contracted On Life Being A Certain Way.

-Tara Brach

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When Desire For A

Tara Brach

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When Desire For A Certain Person's Attention Becomes An "i Have To Have" Kind Of Grasping, Then Identity Gets Organized Around Needing That And It Becomes Very Solid And Sticky. That Causes Suffering Because We're Not Inhabiting The Fullness Of Who We Are, We're Fixated And Contracted On Life Being A Certain Way.

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Observing Desire Without Acting On It Enlarges Our Freedom To Choose How We Live.

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I Think The Reason Buddhism And Western Psychology Are So Compatible Is That Western Psychology Helps To Identify The Stories And The Patterns In Our Personal Lives, But What Buddhist Awareness Training Does Is It Actually Allows The Person To Develop Skills To Stay In What's Going On.

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Radical Acceptance Is The Willingness To Experience Ourselves And Our Lives As It Is.

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In The Process Of Deeply Accepting Our Own Inner Experience, Instead Of Being Identified With A Story Of A Limited Self, We Realize The Compassion And Wakefulness That Is Our Essence.

Just Remember That Everyone Is Struggling; Everyone Is Living With Fear And Uncertainty And It Doesn't Matter What Their Politics Are.

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Sometimes The Easiest Way To Appreciate Ourselves Is By Looking Through The Eyes Of Someone Who Loves Us.

I Want To Accept Myself Completely, Just As I Am.

Clearly Recognizing What Is Happening Inside Us, And Regarding What We See With An Open, Kind And Loving Heart, Is What I Call Radical Acceptance. If We Are Holding Back From Any Part Of Our Experience, If Our Heart Shuts Out Any Part Of Who We Are And What We Feel, We Are Fueling The Fears And Feelings Of Separation That Sustain The Trance Of Unworthiness. Radical Acceptance Directly Dismantles The Very Foundations Of This Trance.

The Boundary To What We Can Accept Is The Boundary To Our Freedom.

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There Are Stories We Take On From Our Culture, And There Are Stories Based On Our Own Personal History. Some Of Those Stories Lock Us In Limiting Beliefs And Lead To Suffering, And There Are Others That Can Move Us Toward Freedom.

When I'm Attached, I Find That I Don't See The Other Person As Clearly Because I'm More Caught Up In What I'm Wanting.

As Long As We Are Alive, We Feel Fear. It Is An Intrinsic Part Of Our Makeup, As Natural As A Bitter Cold Winter Day Or The Winds That Rip Branches Off Trees. If We Resist It Or Push It Aside, We Miss A Powerful Opportunity For Awakening.

But This Revolutionary Act Of Treating Ourselves Tenderly Can Begin To Undo The Aversive Messages Of A Lifetime.

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In The Collective Psyche It Is Being Understood... That We Can Cultivate Wisdom And Compassion.

What Would It Be Like If, Right In The Midst Of This Busyness, We Were To Consciously Take Our Hands Off The Controls? What If We Were To Intentionally Stop Our Mental Computations And Our Rushing Around And, For A Minute Or Two, Simply Pause And Notice Our Inner Experience?

A Lot Of Times In Spiritual Communities, Detachment Is Considered To Be An Expression Of Being Spiritually Evolved When Often, We Have Want And Fear Around Being In Relationship With Each Other.

Mindfulness Is A Pause - The Space Between Stimulus And Response: That's Where Choice Lies.

My Understanding Is That To Love, We Need To Be Able To Totally Surrender To The Living/dying Nature Of This World.

It Is Natural That Our Minds Replay Old Stories, Because That Is Our Own Mechanism For Trying To Work Out Unresolved Problems. Yet Rerunning Those Stories Will Be A Fruitless Looping Until We Learn How To Move From The Story Into Our Body. This Is Why Therapy Alone Often Doesn't Bring Full Healing And Awakening.

Our Kids Go To School And They Come Out Feeling Not Intelligent, Not Desirable, Not Attractive Or Appealing To Others.

The Main Thing Going On Around Intimacy Is That We've Developed A Lot Of Strategies So We'll Be A Desirable Package.

The Trance Of Unworthiness Keeps The Sweetness Of Belonging Out Of Reach. The Path To "the Sweetness Of Belonging," Is Acceptance - Acceptance Of Ourselves And Acceptance Of Others Without Judgment.

It Is Through Realizing Loving Presence As Our Very Essence, Through Being That Presence, That We Discover True Freedom.

The Way To Develop The Habit Of Savoring Is To Pause When Something Is Beautiful And Good And Catches Our Attention - The Sound Of Rain, The Look Of The Night Sky - The Glow In A Child's Eyes, Or When We Witness Some Kindness. Pause... Then Totally Immerse In The Experience Of Savoring It.

In Bullfighting There Is An Interesting Parallel To The Pause As A Place Of Refuge And Renewal. It Is Believed That In The Midst Of A Fight, A Bull Can Find His Own Particular Area Of Safety In The Arena. There He Can Reclaim His Strength And Power. This Place And Inner State Are Called His Querencia. As Long As The Bull Remains Enraged And Reactive, The Matador Is In Charge. Yet When He Finds His Querencia, He Gathers His Strength And Loses His Fear. From The Matador's Perspective, At This Point The Bull Is Truly Dangerous, For He Has Tapped Into His Power.

Each Time You Meet An Old Emotional Pattern With Presence, Your Awakening To Truth Can Deepen. There’s Less Identification With The Self In The Story And More Ability To Rest In The Awareness That Is Witnessing What’s Happening. You Become More Able To Abide In Compassion, To Remember And Trust Your True Home. Rather Than Cycling Repetitively Through Old Conditioning, You Are Actually Spiraling Toward Freedom.

Most Of Us Need To Be Reminded That We Are Good, That We Are Lovable, That We Belong. If We Knew Just How Powerfully Our Thoughts, Words, And Actions Affected The Hearts Of Those Around Us, We'd Reach Out And Join Hands Again And Again. Our Relationships Have The Potential To Be A Sacred Refuge, A Place Of Healing And Awakening. With Each Person We Meet, We Can Learn To Look Behind The Mask And See The One Who Longs To Love And Be Loved.

It's The Beginning Of Opening To Love. Even If There's Not Much Feeling Of Compassion Toward Oneself, Just Say, "it's Okay, Sweetheart," Or "i'm Sorry And I Love You."

If It Weren't For Desire, The Formless Would Not Have Come Into Form And Engage Creatively.

This Is For Anyone Reading This Who Wants To Explore It. Recognize The Thought, "afraid Of Loving," Then Gently Put Your Hand On Your Heart To Send A Message Of Kindness.

By Running From What We Fear, We Feed The Inner Darkness

To Me, Bringing Mindfulness-bas Ed Practices To Students, Teachers And Parents Is Some Of The Most Important Work We Can Be Doing. If We Can Help The Next Generation Become More Self-aware, Empathetic And Emotionally Resilient, They Will Bring Their Wisdom To Healing The Earth And Creating A More Peaceful World.

Telling Each Other The Truth And Being Who We Are, And Having Space For The Other Person's Vulnerability In Being Who They Are, Allows Us To Move In A Kind Of Dance Together That's Very Fluid And Graceful.

Relaxation Is The Doorway To Both Wisdom And Compassion.

In A Basic Way, Acceptance Is Seeing Clearly What's Happening And Holding It With Kindness. This Is A Radical Antidote To The Suffering Of Judging Mind.

We Want To Be In Open, Loving Communion With Each Other And Our Greatest Fear Is Intimacy. That It Won't Work And We'll Be Rejected.

The Spiritual Path Is Not A Solo Endeavor. In Fact, The Very Notion Of A Self Who Is Trying To Free Her/ Himself Is A Delusion. We Are In It Together And The Company Of Spiritual Friends Helps Us Realize Our Interconnectedness.

When We're Awake In Our Bodies And Sense, The World Comes Alive. Wisdom, Creativity, And Love Are Discovered As We Relax And Awaken Through Our Bodies.

Longing, Felt Fully, Carries Us To Belonging.

People Have To Find Their Rhythm. Some People Have Need For More Contact And Time Together And Some People Need More Space.

We Wait For Things To Be Different In Order To Feel Okay With Life. As Long As We Keep Attaching Our Happiness To The External Events Of Our Lives, Which Are Ever Changing, We’ll Always Be Left Waiting For It.

Feelings And Stories Of Unworthiness And Shame Are Perhaps The Most Binding Element In The Trance Of Fear. When We Believe Something Is Wrong With Us, We Are Convinced We Are In Danger. Our Shame Fuels Ongoing Fear, And Our Fear Fuels More Shame. The Very Fact That We Feel Fear Seems To Prove That We Are Broken Or Incapable. When We Are Trapped In Trance, Being Fearful And Bad Seem To Define Who We Are. The Anxiety In Our Body, The Stories, The Ways We Make Excuses, Withdraw Or Lash Out—these Become To Us The Self That Is Most Real.

Paying Attention Is The Most Basic And Profound Expression Of Love.

The Intimacy That Arises In Listening And Speaking Truth Is Only Possible If We Can Open To The Vulnerability Of Our Own Hearts. Breathing In, Contacting The Life That Is Right Here, Is Our First Step. Once We Have Held Ourselves With Kindness, We Can Touch Others In A Vital And Healing Way.

Somewhere In My Early Twenties I Realized I Was Pretty Constantly Monitoring Myself, Judging How I Was Always Falling Short, Whether It Was About Not Being A Good Enough Daughter Or Friend, Or My Appearance, Or Whatever. I Ended Up Becoming Involved With A Spiritual Path In The Yogic Tradition, Living In An Ashram, Doing A Very Rigorous Spiritual Practice.

Fear Of Being A Flawed Person Lay At The Root Of My Trance, And I Had Sacrificed Many Moments Over The Years In Trying To Prove My Worth. Like The Tiger Mohini, I Inhabited A Self-made Prison That Stopped Me From Living Fully.

I Think It's Possible To Have Experiences Of Love Without Attachment, But I Think Part Of Our Conditioning Is To Grasp At Times, Especially When There Are Unmet Needs. It's Part Of Our Nervous System To Hold On To Where We Think Those Needs Will Be Met.

We Can Find True Refuge Within Our Own Hearts And Minds-right Here, Right Now, In The Midst Of Our Moment-to-momen T Lives.

By Taking The Time To Explore Charged Memories In Therapy We Might Uncover Feelings That Have Been Buried For Decades.

We Are Uncomfortable Because Everything In Our Life Keeps Changing -- Our Inner Moods, Our Bodies, Our Work, The People We Love, The World We Live In. We Can't Hold On To Anything -- A Beautiful Sunset, A Sweet Taste, An Intimate Moment With A Lover, Our Very Existence As The Body/mind We Call Self -- Because All Things Come And Go. Lacking Any Permanent Satisfaction, We Continuously Need Another Injection Of Fuel, Stimulation, Reassurance From Loved Ones, Medicine, Exercise, And Meditation. We Are Continually Driven To Become Something More, To Experience Something Else.

I Mentioned Earlier The Two Wings Of Awareness. The First Step Is Recognizing The Fear Of Getting Close To Others - This Honest Witnessing Of Where It Is In The Body, Where It Is In Your Beliefs.the Other Wing Regards What's Seen With Kindness And Compassion.

Underneath The Stress Is Fear, And The Biggest Is Our Own Personal Fear Of Failure.

Fear Of Failure

When Desire For A Certain Person's Attention Becomes An "i Have To Have" Kind Of Grasping, Then Identity Gets Organized Around Needing That And It Becomes Very Solid And Sticky. That Causes Suffering Because We're Not Inhabiting The Fullness Of Who We Are, We're Fixated And Contracted On Life Being A Certain Way.

When We Relax About Imperfection, We No Longer Lose Our Life Moments In The Pursuit Of Being Different And In The Fear Of What Is Wrong.

Being Different

Presence Is Not Some Exotic State That We Need To Search For Or Manufacture. In The Simplest Terms, It Is The Felt Sense Of Wakefulness, Openness, And Tenderness That Arises When We Are Fully Here And Now With Our Experience.

My First Book, 'radical Acceptance', Grew Out Of The Suffering Of Feeling Personally Deficient And Unworthy. Because Most Of Us Are So Quick To Turn Against Ourselves, The Teachings And Practices Of Radical Acceptance Continue As A Strong Current In 'true Refuge': Nurturing A Forgiving, Understanding Heart Is A Basic Step On The Path.

Stopping The Endless Pursuit Of Getting Somewhere Else Is The Perhaps Most Beautiful Offering We Can Make To Our Spirit.

Discovering A Richer Quality Of Being-ness Means To Keep Surrendering And Letting Go Of Resistance.

I Recently Read In The Book My Stroke Of Insight By Brain Scientist Jill Bolte Taylor That The Natural Life Span Of An Emotion—the Average Time It Takes For It To Move Through The Nervous System And Body—is Only A Minute And A Half. After That We Need Thoughts To Keep The Emotion Rolling. So If We Wonder Why We Lock Into Painful Emotional States Like Anxiety, Depression, Or Rage, We Need Look No Further Than Our Own Endless Stream Of Inner Dialogue.

The Great Gift Of A Spiritual Path Is Coming To Trust That You Can Find A Way To True Refuge. You Realize That You Can Start Right Where You Are, In The Midst Of Your Life, And Find Peace In Any Circumstance. Even At Those Moments When The Ground Shakes Terribly Beneath You—when There’s A Loss That Will Alter Your Life Forever—you Can Still Trust That You Will Find Your Way Home. This Is Possible Because You’ve Touched The Timeless Love And Awareness That Are Intrinsic To Who You Are.

Where Desire Ends Up Causing Suffering Is When It Fixates.

The Muscles Used To Make A Smile Actually Send A Biochemical Message To Our Nervous System That It Is Safe To Relax The Flight Of Freeze Response.

The Renowned Seventh-century Zen Master Seng-tsan Taught That True Freedom Is Being "without Anxiety About Imperfection.

The Buddha Never Intended To Make Desire Itself The Problem. When He Said Craving Causes Suffering, He Was Referring Not To Our Natural Inclination As Living Beings To Have Wants And Needs, But To Our Habit Of Clinging To Experience That Must, By Nature, Pass Away.

True Refuge Is That Which Allows Us To Be At Home, At Peace, To Discover True Happiness. The Only Thing That Can Give Us True Refuge Is The Awareness And Love That Is Intrinsic To Who We Are. Ultimately, Its Our Own True Nature.

The Most Powerful Healing Arises From The Simple Intention To Love The Life Within You, Unconditionally, With As Much Tenderness And Presence As Possible.

Perhaps The Biggest Tragedy Of Our Lives Is That Freedom Is Possible, Yet We Can Pass Our Years Trapped In The Same Old Patterns.

The Emotion Of Fear Often Works Overtime. Even When There Is No Immediate Threat, Our Body May Remain Tight And On Guard, Our Mind Narrowed To Focus On What Might Go Wrong. When This Happens, Fear Is No Longer Functioning To Secure Our Survival. We Are Caught In The Trance Of Fear And Our Moment-to-moment Experience Becomes Bound In Reactivity. We Spend Our Time And Energy Defending Our Life Rather Than Living It Fully.

If Our Hearts Are Ready For Anything, We Are Touched By The Beauty And Poetry And Mystery That Fill Our World.

Through The Sacred Art Of Pausing, We Develop The Capacity To Stop Hiding, To Stop Running Away From Our Experience. We Begin To Trust In Our Natural Intelligence, In Our Naturally Wise Heart, In Our Capacity To Open To Whatever Arises.

Awakening Self-compassion Is Often The Greatest Challenge People Face On The Spiritual Path.

With An Undefended Heart, We Can Fall In Love With Life Over And Over Every Day. We Can Become Children Of Wonder, Grateful To Be Walking On Earth, Grateful To Belong With Each Other And To All Of Creation. We Can Find Our True Refuge In Every Moment, In Every Breath.

Falling In Love

Become A Witness To Your Thoughts.

This Longing To Express And Celebrate Life Is Innate And Quite Beautiful.

The Two Wings Of Mindfulness And Kindness Will Begin To Open The Heart To More Connection With Our World.

If I Can Forgive The Attachment In Myself And Open To The Vulnerability That's Underneath It, Then Rather Than Fixating On Another Person To Satisfy My Need, I'm Actually Going Right To Where The Needs Come From And Able To Bring A Real Healing.

There's Healthy Attachment, Like With A Mother And Child. It's Biologically Part Of Our Survival.

When We Put Down Ideas Of What Life Should Be Like, We Are Free To Wholeheartedly Say Yes To Our Life As It Is.

That Non-attachment Gives Us The Freedom To Be Exactly Who We Are.

The Mistake We Make Is That When We're Feeling Another Person Is Not Treating Us In The Way That Makes Us Feel Secure And Loved, We Fixate Our Attention On That Person And What's Wrong With Them. We Also Fixate On What's Wrong With Us. Instead, We Can Bring Forward Two Wings Of Awareness: The Wing Of Mindfulness (noticing What's Going On Inside Us) And The Wing Of Kindness (compassion To What's Going On Inside Us).

I'd Known That I Had The Capacity To Love, That I Enjoyed Seeing Other People Be Happy, That I Had A Real Awe And Wonder About The Beauty Of This World.

Capacity To Love

Pain Is Not Wrong. Reacting To Pain As Wrong Initiates The Trance Of Unworthiness. The Moment We Believe Something Is Wrong, Our World Shrinks And We Lose Ourselves In The Effort To Combat The Pain.

There Are Some Things We Can't Choose, But In Being Present We Can Choose How We Want To Relate To Them

With The First Out Breath, You Are Releasing Worries, Plans, Mental Tensions. With The Second Out Breath, You Are Releasing Physical Tightness And Tension. With The Third Out Breath, You Are Releasing Difficult Emotions.

By Regarding Ourselves With Kindness, We Begin To Dissolve The Identity Of An Isolated, Deficient Self. This Creates The Grounds For Including Others In An Unconditionally Loving Heart.

The Fear Side Can Have Us Pull Away And Protect Us, But It's Really A Withdrawal, A Disassociation, A Cutting Off. Rather Than The Word Detachment, I Usually Use The Word Non-attachment. That Can Be Wholesome When We Care And Are Completely Engaged With Each Other But Are Not Attached To Things Being A Certain Way.

When Someone Says To Us, As Thich Nhat Hanh Suggests, "darling, I Care About Your Suffering," A Deep Healing Begins.

Imperfection Is Not Our Personal Problem - It Is A Natural Part Of Existing.

I Speak A Lot About What I Call "the Trance Of Unworthiness" Which Is Really Epidemic In Our Culture, This Sense Of "i'm Not Enough," Or "something's Wrong With Me." Most Of Us Have Some Level Of It Because Our Culture Has All These Standards (handed Down Through Our Families) Of What It Means To Be Okay.

You Have A Unique Body And Mind, With A Particular History And Conditioning. No One Can Offer You A Formula For Navigating All Situations And All States Of Mind. Only By Listening Inwardly In A Fresh And Open Way Will You Discern At Any Given Time What Most Serves Your Healing And Freedom.

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