To open in a loving way is to let awareness notice that tightening.

The renowned seventh-century Zen master Seng-tsan taught that true freedom is being "without anxiety about imperfection.

If we're not open to losing, we're not open to loving.

The process of radical acceptance is to accept that a story has appeared in the mind, and then deepen the attention to see clearly what's happening in the body, to regard those feelings and sensations with kindness and acceptance, and to notice how they come and go.

If our hearts are ready for anything, we are touched by the beauty and poetry and mystery that fill our world.

On this sacred path of Radical Acceptance, rather than striving for perfection, we discover how to love ourselves into wholeness.

I recently read in the book My Stroke of Insight by brain scientist Jill Bolte Taylor that the natural life span of an emotion—the average time it takes for it to move through the nervous system and body—is only a minute and a half. After that we need thoughts to keep the emotion rolling. So if we wonder why we lock into painful emotional states like anxiety, depression, or rage, we need look no further than our own endless stream of inner dialogue.