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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

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Tara Brach
Age: 71
Born: 1953
Born: May 17
Peace Activist
Psychologist
Teacher
Moving
Based
History
Toward
Culture
Lead
Others
Move
Stories
Personal
Limiting
Take
Belief
Lock
Suffering
Locks
Freedom
Beliefs

More quotes by 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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If we're not open to losing, we're not open to loving.
Tara Brach
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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
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That non-attachment gives us the freedom to be exactly who we are.
Tara Brach
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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
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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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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
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We are mindful of desire when we experience it with an embodied awareness, recognizing the sensations and thoughts of wanting as arising and passing phenomena. While this isn't easy, as we cultivate the clear seeing and compassion of Radical Acceptance, we discover we can open fully to this natural force, and remain free in its midst.
Tara Brach
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The two wings of mindfulness and kindness will begin to open the heart to more connection with our world.
Tara Brach
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I want to accept myself completely, just as I am.
Tara Brach
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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
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As long as we are alive, we feel fear. It is an intrinsic part of our makeup, as natural as a bitter cold winter day or the winds that rip branches off trees. If we resist it or push it aside, we miss a powerful opportunity for awakening.
Tara Brach
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In intimate relationships, if we start trying to be more real, it's very scary.
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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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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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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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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The renowned seventh-century Zen master Seng-tsan taught that true freedom is being without anxiety about imperfection.
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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It is through realizing loving presence as our very essence, through being that presence, that we discover true freedom.
Tara Brach