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We want to be in open, loving communion with each other and our greatest fear is intimacy. That it won't work and we'll be rejected.

Tara Brach

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Tara Brach
Age: 71
Born: 1953
Born: May 17
Peace Activist
Psychologist
Teacher
Fear
Work
Communion
Rejected
Intimacy
Loving
Greatest
Open

More quotes by 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.
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Happiness lies not in finding what is missing, but in finding what is present.
Tara Brach
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In the process of deeply accepting our own inner experience, instead of being identified with a story of a limited self, we realize the compassion and wakefulness that is our essence.
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Meditation helps us gain the capacity to relax, to connect with what is going on right here and right now, to connect with other people, to re-access our resourcefulness, our clarity and our ability to focus and keep an open heart.
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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
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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
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We're so used to presenting ourselves and getting approval according to our achievements that it's difficult to be authentic and trust that we'll be accepted just as we are.
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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The boundary to what we can accept is the boundary to our freedom.
Tara Brach
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Paying attention is the most basic and profound expression of love.
Tara Brach
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True refuge is that which allows us to be at home, at peace, to discover true happiness. The only thing that can give us true refuge is the awareness and love that is intrinsic to who we are. Ultimately, its our own true nature.
Tara Brach
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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
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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
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Our greatest longing is to be intimate.
Tara Brach
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Where desire ends up causing suffering is when it fixates.
Tara Brach
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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
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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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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
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Relaxation is the doorway to both wisdom and compassion.
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