Once you create a self-justifying storyline, your emotional entrapment within it quadruples.
Pema ChodronGenerosity is an activity that loosens us up. By offering whatever we can - a dollar, a flower, a word of encouragement - we are training in letting go.
Pema ChodronIf we learn to open our hearts, anyone, including the people who drive us crazy, can be our teacher.
Pema ChodronCool loneliness allows us to look honestly and without aggressionat our own minds. We can gradually drop our ideals of who we think weought to be, or who we think we want to be, or who we think other peoplethink we want to be or ought to be. We give it up and just look directlywith compassion and humor at who we are. Then loneliness is no threat andheartache, no punishment.
Pema ChodronBeing satisfied with what we already have is a magical golden key to being alive in a full, unrestricted, and inspired way.
Pema ChodronWe feel that we have to be right so that we can feel good. We donโt want to be wrong because then weโll feel bad. But we could be more compassionate toward all these parts of ourselves. The whole right and wrong business closes us down and makes our world smaller. Wanting situations and relationships to be solid, permanent, and graspable obscures the pith of the matter, which is that things are fundamentally groundless.
Pema Chodron