Quote

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.

Tara Brach

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Tara Brach
Age: 71
Born: 1953
Born: May 17
Peace Activist
Psychologist
Teacher
Moments
Combat
Something
Buddhist
Believe
Lose
Initiates
World
Loses
Unworthiness
Effort
Trance
Wrong
Initiate
Moment
Reacting
Pain
Shrinks

More quotes by Tara Brach

Image
If you can, do a gratitude practice: Each day write down three things you're grateful for. There are different ways to do this. You can have a gratitude buddy, someone with whom, at the end of the day, you exchange messages listing these three things you are grateful for. Also, you can journal it or reflect on it silently.
Tara Brach
Image
The renowned seventh-century Zen master Seng-tsan taught that true freedom is being without anxiety about imperfection.
Tara Brach
Image
If [kids] get into loving relationships, they're afraid they'll be found wanting, won't have the looks or body shape our culture deems worthy. Many of us feel we're falling short and if we start feeling close to another person, that we'll be found out and rejected.
Tara Brach
Image
When we put down ideas of what life should be like, we are free to wholeheartedly say yes to our life as it is.
Tara Brach
Image
The boundary to what we can accept is the boundary to our freedom.
Tara Brach
Image
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.
Tara Brach
Image
Offer some gesture of kindness to yourself. Sometimes it's just a message, to say: It's okay. You're going to be okay. We've been through this before. The intention is reassurance, that you are not alone and you can do this. It is the most powerful way to come out of what I call the trance of unworthiness.
Tara Brach
Image
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.
Tara Brach
Image
In intimate relationships, if we start trying to be more real, it's very scary.
Tara Brach
Image
Making a U-turn from our thoughts to our feelings re-connects us to our own inner experience and creates the grounds for connecting with others in a more authentic way. It's a movement from head to heart.
Tara Brach
Image
We are waiting for the next moment to contain what this moment does not.
Tara Brach
Image
We, like the Mother of the World, become the compassionate presence that can hold, with tenderness, the rising and passing waves of suffering.
Tara Brach
Image
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.
Tara Brach
Image
If we're not open to losing, we're not open to loving.
Tara Brach
Image
If our hearts are ready for anything, we can open to our inevitable losses, and to the depths of our sorrow. We can grieve our lost loves, our lost youth, our lost health, our lost capacities. This is part of our humanness, part of the expression of our love for life.
Tara Brach
Image
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.
Tara Brach
Image
Observing desire without acting on it enlarges our freedom to choose how we live.
Tara Brach
Image
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.
Tara Brach
Image
The two wings of mindfulness and kindness will begin to open the heart to more connection with our world.
Tara Brach
Image
Happiness lies not in finding what is missing, but in finding what is present.
Tara Brach