In the process of deeply accepting our own inner experience, instead of being identified with a story of a limited self, we realize the compassion and wakefulness that is our essence.
Tara BrachIf our hearts are ready for anything, we are touched by the beauty and poetry and mystery that fill our world.
Tara BrachYou can think of spiritual practice as a kind of spiritual re-parenting ... You're offering yourself the two qualities that make up good parenting: understanding - seeing yourself for who you truly are - and relating to what you see with unconditional love.
Tara BrachWe are uncomfortable because everything in our life keeps changing -- our inner moods, our bodies, our work, the people we love, the world we live in. We can't hold on to anything -- a beautiful sunset, a sweet taste, an intimate moment with a lover, our very existence as the body/mind we call self -- because all things come and go. Lacking any permanent satisfaction, we continuously need another injection of fuel, stimulation, reassurance from loved ones, medicine, exercise, and meditation. We are continually driven to become something more, to experience something else.
Tara BrachWe wait for things to be different in order to feel okay with life. As long as we keep attaching our happiness to the external events of our lives, which are ever changing, we’ll always be left waiting for it.
Tara BrachI speak a lot about what I call "the trance of unworthiness" which is really epidemic in our culture, this sense of "I'm not enough," or "something's wrong with me." Most of us have some level of it because our culture has all these standards (handed down through our families) of what it means to be okay.
Tara Brach