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Presence is not some exotic state that we need to search for or manufacture. In the simplest terms, it is the felt sense of wakefulness, openness, and tenderness that arises when we are fully here and now with our experience.

Tara Brach

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Tara Brach
Age: 71
Born: 1953
Born: May 17
Peace Activist
Psychologist
Teacher
States
Presence
Manufacture
Need
Fully
Exotic
Needs
Terms
Arises
Term
Openness
State
Simplest
Experience
Tenderness
Sense
Arise
Felt
Search
Wakefulness

More quotes by 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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I want to accept myself completely, just as I am.
Tara Brach
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The main thing going on around intimacy is that we've developed a lot of strategies so we'll be a desirable package.
Tara Brach
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I think it's possible to have experiences of love without attachment, but I think part of our conditioning is to grasp at times, especially when there are unmet needs. It's part of our nervous system to hold on to where we think those needs will be met.
Tara Brach
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If there's a demand of being together in a certain way, those expectations and judgements take away from that space and create an edginess and a cramped-ness to the relationship.
Tara Brach
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Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life with the Heart of a Buddha.
Tara Brach
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Unless we're completely awake, have a degree of that. We tense against love and hold on in a way that doesn't let it flow. When that's really strong, the key piece to freeing our hearts is self-compassion.
Tara Brach
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Relaxation is the doorway to both wisdom and compassion.
Tara Brach
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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
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If I can forgive the attachment in myself and open to the vulnerability that's underneath it, then rather than fixating on another person to satisfy my need, I'm actually going right to where the needs come from and able to bring a real healing.
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...We may want to love other people without holding back, to feel authentic, to breathe in the beauty around us, to dance and sing. Yet each day we listen to inner voices that keep our life small.
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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I think the reason Buddhism and Western psychology are so compatible is that Western psychology helps to identify the stories and the patterns in our personal lives, but what Buddhist awareness training does is it actually allows the person to develop skills to stay in what's going on.
Tara Brach
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I'd known that I had the capacity to love, that I enjoyed seeing other people be happy, that I had a real awe and wonder about the beauty of this world.
Tara Brach
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Mindfulness is a pause - the space between stimulus and response: that's where choice lies.
Tara Brach
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When we're awake in our bodies and sense, the world comes alive. Wisdom, creativity, and love are discovered as we relax and awaken through our bodies.
Tara Brach
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There's healthy attachment, like with a mother and child. It's biologically part of our survival.
Tara Brach
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My first book, 'Radical Acceptance', grew out of the suffering of feeling personally deficient and unworthy. Because most of us are so quick to turn against ourselves, the teachings and practices of radical acceptance continue as a strong current in 'True Refuge': nurturing a forgiving, understanding heart is a basic step on the path.
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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In the collective psyche it is being understood... that we can cultivate wisdom and compassion.
Tara Brach