"Be grateful to everyone" is about making peace with the aspects of ourselves that we have rejected... If we were to make a list of people we don't like - people we find obnoxious, threatening, or worthy of contempt - we would discover much about those aspects of ourselves that we can't face... other people trigger the karma that we haven't worked out.
Pema ChodronOnce you create a self-justifying storyline, your emotional entrapment within it quadruples.
Pema ChodronAll ego really is, is our opinions, which we take to be solid, real, and the absolute truth about how things are.
Pema ChodronThis moving away from comfort and security, this stepping out into what is unknown, uncharted and shaky - that's called liberation.
Pema ChodronSo war and peace start in the human heart. Whether that heart is open or whether that heart closes has global implications.
Pema ChodronHolding on to beliefs limits our experience of life. That doesn't mean that beliefs or ideas or thinking is a problem; the stubborn attitude of having to have things be a particular way, grasping on to our beliefs and thoughts, all these cause the problems. To put it simply, using your belief system this way creates a situation in which you choose to be blind instead of being able to see, to be deaf instead of being able to hear, to be dead rather than alive, asleep rather than awake.
Pema Chodron