Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Tara Brach
Age: 71
Born: 1953
Born: May 17
Peace Activist
Psychologist
Teacher
Person
Becomes
Sticky
Kind
Causes
Needing
Way
Attention
Grasping
Life
Suffering
Fullness
Desire
Solid
Around
Organized
Fixated
Certain
Identity
Inhabiting
Persons
Gets
Contracted

More quotes by Tara Brach

Image
I think of desire as the essence that brings forth the whole universe.
Tara Brach
Image
If our hearts are ready for anything, we are touched by the beauty and poetry and mystery that fill our world.
Tara Brach
Image
Meditation helps us to get out of our thoughts about the future and really be in the present moment.
Tara Brach
Image
The spiritual path is not a solo endeavor. In fact, the very notion of a self who is trying to free her/ himself is a delusion. We are in it together and the company of spiritual friends helps us realize our interconnectedness.
Tara Brach
Image
If attachment then carries forward in a way that's not healthy, we need to let it be there without making it wrong and bring as compassionate and honest attention to it as possible. Honor that this is part of being human, but it's important to know when it's getting in the way.
Tara Brach
Image
There's healthy attachment, like with a mother and child. It's biologically part of our survival.
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
If I'm judging the attachment, myself, or another person, then I create separation.
Tara Brach
Image
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
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
I want to accept myself completely, just as I am.
Tara Brach
Image
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
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
I would say both Western psychology and Eastern paths would recognize that we get caught up in feeling like a separate self and an unworthy self.
Tara Brach
Image
Happiness lies not in finding what is missing, but in finding what is present.
Tara Brach
Image
In intimate relationships, if we start trying to be more real, it's very scary.
Tara Brach
Image
We wait for things to be different in order to feel okay with life. As long as we keep attaching our happiness to the external events of our lives, which are ever changing, we’ll always be left waiting for it.
Tara Brach
Image
There are some things we can't choose, but in being present we can choose how we want to relate to them
Tara Brach
Image
Managing life from our mental control towers, we have separated ourselves from our bodies and hearts.
Tara Brach
Image
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