Quote

Being preoccupied with our self-image is like being deaf and blind. It's like standing in the middle of a vast field of wildflowers with a black hood over our heads. It's like coming upon a tree of singing birds while wearing earplugs.

Pema Chodron

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Pema Chodron
Age: 88
Born: 1936
Born: July 14
Clergyman
Philosopher
Writer
New York City
New York
Deirdre Blomfield-Brow
Coming
Vast
Tree
Field
Earplugs
Middle
Image
Preoccupied
Upon
Bird
Hood
Black
Blind
Deaf
Self
Fields
Heads
Like
Standing
Birds
Singing
Wearing

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Until we stop clinging to the concept of good and evil, the world will continue to manifest as friendly goddesses and harmful demons.
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By becoming intimate with how we close down and how we open up, we awaken our unlimited potential.
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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)
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Fear itself is the vanguard of wisdom
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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.
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Compassion starts with making friends with ourselves.
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It becomes increasingly clear that we won’t be free of self-destructive patterns unless we develop a compassionate understanding of what they are.
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If we begin to get in touch with whatever we feel with some kind of kindness, our protective shells will melt, and we'll find that more areas of our lives are workable. AS we learn to have compassion for ourselves, the circle of compassion for others-what and whom we can work with, and how-becomes wider.
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Feel the feelings and drop the story.
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None of us is ever OK, but we all get through everything just fine.
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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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Life's work is to wake up, to let the things that enter your life wake you up rather than put you to sleep.
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Rather than becoming more relaxed, you start pulling down the shades and locking the door. When you do go out, you find the experience more and more unsettling and disagreeable. You become touchier, more fearful, more irritable than ever. The more you try to get it your way, the less you feel at home.
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When we scratch the wound and give into our addictions we do not allow the wound to heal.
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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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We tend to forget that we are part of the natural scheme of things.
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We are undoing a pattern... It's the human pattern: we project onto the world a zillion possibilities of attaining resolution.
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It is only when we begin to relax with ourselves that meditation becomes a transformative process. Only when we relate with ourselves without moralizing, without harshness, without deception, can we let go of harmful patterns. Without maitri (metta), renunciation of old habits becomes abusive. This is an important point.
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Hope and fear come from feeling that we lack something they come from a sense of poverty. We can’t simply relax with ourselves. We hold on to hope, and hope robs us of the present moment. We feel that someone else knows what is going on, but that there is something missing in us, and therefore something is lacking in our world.
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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.
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