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

More quotes by Pema Chodron

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Compassion becomes real when we recognize our shared humanity.
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If you work with your mind, that will alleviate all the suffering that seems to come from the outside.
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Ordinarily we are swept away by habitual momentum and don't interrupt our patterns slightly. When we feel betrayed or disappointed, does it occur to us to practice?
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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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It's hard to know whether to laugh or to cry at the human predicament. Here we are with so much wisdom and tenderness, and—without even knowing it—we cover it over to protect ourselves from insecurity. Although we have the potential to experience the freedom of a butterfly, we mysteriously prefer the small and fearful cocoon of ego.
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If someone comes along and shoots an arrow into your heart, it's fruitless to stand there and yell at the person. It would be much better to turn your attention to the fact that there's an arrow in your heart.
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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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Awareness is the key. Do we see the stories that we're telling ourselves and question their validity?
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Enlightenment is a direct experience with reality.
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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.
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In order to have compassion for others, we have to have compassion for ourselves.
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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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Let difficulty transform you. And it will. In my experience, we just need help in learning how not to run away.
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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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A heartfelt sense of aspiring cuts through negativity about yourself it cuts through the heavy trips you lay on yourself.
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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.
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Let your curiosity be greater than your fear.
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Sitting meditation gives us a way to move closer to our thoughts and emotions and to get in touch with our bodies.
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In truth, there is enormous space in which to live our everyday lives.
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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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