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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.

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
Real
Path
Parts
Start
Consider
Suffering
Compassion
Spiritual
Along
Firsts
Especially
Occur
First
Deep
Dislike
Many
Realize
Healing
Must
Realizing
Ugly

More quotes by Pema Chodron

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The idea is to develop sympathy for your own confusion.
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The Process of becoming unstuck requires tremendous bravery, because basically we are completely changing our way of perceiving reality.
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My experience with forgiveness is that it sort of comes spontaneously at a certain point and to try to force it it's not really forgiveness. It's Buddhist philosophy or something spiritual jargon that you're trying to live up to but you're just using it against yourself as a reason why you're not okay.
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The biggest obstacle to taking a bigger perspective on life is that our emotions capture and blind us.
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So war and peace start in the human heart. Whether that heart is open or whether that heart closes has global implications.
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Softening what is rigid in our hearts.
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When we resist change, it’s called suffering. But when we can completely let go and not struggle against it, when we can embrace the groundlessness of our situation and relax into it’s dynamic quality, that’s called enlightenment
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Tonglen is a way for you to be with people who need you - beginning with yourself.
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A heartfelt sense of aspiring cuts through negativity about yourself it cuts through the heavy trips you lay on yourself.
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It has a lot to do with developing patience, not with the check-out person so much, but with your own pain that arises, the rawness and the vulnerability, and sending some kind of warmth and love to that rawness and soreness. I think that's how we have to practice.
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When you begin to touch your heart or let your heart be touched, you begin to discover that it's bottomless.
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Unconditional good heart toward others is not even a possibility unless we attend to our own demons.
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In a nutshell, when life is pleasant, think of others. When life is a burden, think of others.
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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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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.
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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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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.
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it is only to the extent that we are willing to expose ourselves again and again to annihilation that we are able to find that part of ourselves that is indestructible.
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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.
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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.
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