The more we witness our emotional reactions and understand how they work, the easier it is to refrain.

Even if you don't feel appreciation, just look. Feel what you feel; take an interest and be curious.

Meditation practice isn’t about trying to throw ourselves away and become something better. It’s about befriending who we are already. The ground of practice is you or me or whoever we are right now, just as we are. That’s the ground, that’s what we study, that’s what we come to know with tremendous curiosity and interest.

We can spend our whole lives escaping from the monsters of our minds. (36)

We sow the seeds of our future hells or happiness by the way we open or close our minds right now.

It's a transformative experience to simply pause instead of immediately fill up the space. By waiting, we begin to connect with fundamental restlessness as well as fundamental spaciousness. -Pema Chodron, from "When Things Fall Apart

Everything in our lives has the potential to wake us up or put us to sleep. Allowing it to awaken us is up to us.