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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

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Tara Brach
Age: 71
Born: 1953
Born: May 17
Peace Activist
Psychologist
Teacher
Like
Wholeheartedly
Free
Ideas
Life

More quotes by Tara Brach

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Our greatest longing is to be intimate.
Tara Brach
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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.
Tara Brach
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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.
Tara Brach
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The renowned seventh-century Zen master Seng-tsan taught that true freedom is being without anxiety about imperfection.
Tara Brach
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You can think of spiritual practice as a kind of spiritual re-parenting ... You're offering yourself the two qualities that make up good parenting: understanding - seeing yourself for who you truly are - and relating to what you see with unconditional love.
Tara Brach
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If you let someone know you appreciate him or her, especially when you're going to disagree, it gets that person's defenses down.
Tara Brach
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I registered the dukkha of self-aversion with such clarity that I knew there was no freedom unless I could love this life without holding back. This didn't mean I was going to ignore my flaws and stop seeking to improve what I could. But in the deepest way, I was not going to fixate on the conclusion that something was wrong with me.
Tara Brach
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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
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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
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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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If our hearts are ready for anything, we are touched by the beauty and poetry and mystery that fill our world.
Tara Brach
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Radical Acceptance is the willingness to experience ourselves and our lives as it is.
Tara Brach
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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
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Perhaps the biggest tragedy of our lives is that freedom is possible, yet we can pass our years trapped in the same old patterns.
Tara Brach
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When we open to love, we become love.
Tara Brach
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Most of us grew up with a very damaging story that something is wrong with us. Gradually - or as in my case, suddenly - we become resolved not to believe this anymore. It takes a dedicated practice to follow up on that resolution, because the conditioning is very strong to keep generating self-demeaning stories.
Tara Brach
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It is through realizing loving presence as our very essence, through being that presence, that we discover true freedom.
Tara Brach
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Paying attention is the most basic and profound expression of love.
Tara Brach
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Allowing another to be as they are is more what I think of as space. The space to express yourself and know that you're going to be accepted. That's more where I go than with the actual physical logistics of how much time you have together and how much time you have apart.
Tara Brach
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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.
Tara Brach