Tara Brach Quotes

Making a U-turn from our thoughts to our feelings re-connects us to our own inner experience and creates the grounds for connecting with others in a more authentic way. It's a movement from head to heart.

When I watch that attachment happening, I see the beliefs that I have around it. If somebody's not paying attention to me in a certain way, in my mind, it means they don't love me or they don't respect me. Bringing awareness to the beliefs that are underneath the attachment and bringing awareness to the way my body and heart are tightening, helps me wake up and re-inhabit a larger space of being. Holding on and pushing away might be going on but I'm freer to respond in a healthy way.

If attachment then carries forward in a way that's not healthy, we need to let it be there without making it wrong and bring as compassionate and honest attention to it as possible. Honor that this is part of being human, but it's important to know when it's getting in the way.

As long as we are alive, we feel fear. It is an intrinsic part of our makeup, as natural as a bitter cold winter day or the winds that rip branches off trees. If we resist it or push it aside, we miss a powerful opportunity for awakening.

By taking the time to explore charged memories in therapy we might uncover feelings that have been buried for decades.

If you let someone know you appreciate him or her, especially when you're going to disagree, it gets that person's defenses down.

We can find true refuge within our own hearts and minds-right here, right now, in the midst of our moment-to-momen t lives. We find true refuge whenever we recognize the silent space of awareness behind all our busy doing and striving. We find refuge whenever our hearts open with tenderness and love. We find refuge whenever we connect with the innate clarity and intelligence of our true nature.

My understanding is that to love, we need to be able to totally surrender to the living/dying nature of this world.

Most of us grow up with a sense of "I'm not intelligent enough." It's such a sad thing that in the West we worship a certain kind of left-brain intelligence.

The main thing going on around intimacy is that we've developed a lot of strategies so we'll be a desirable package.

In bullfighting there is an interesting parallel to the pause as a place of refuge and renewal. It is believed that in the midst of a fight, a bull can find his own particular area of safety in the arena. There he can reclaim his strength and power. This place and inner state are called his querencia. As long as the bull remains enraged and reactive, the matador is in charge. Yet when he finds his querencia, he gathers his strength and loses his fear. From the matador's perspective, at this point the bull is truly dangerous, for he has tapped into his power.

The Buddha never intended to make desire itself the problem. When he said craving causes suffering, he was referring not to our natural inclination as living beings to have wants and needs, but to our habit of clinging to experience that must, by nature, pass away.

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.

If you can, do a gratitude practice: Each day write down three things you're grateful for. There are different ways to do this. You can have a gratitude buddy, someone with whom, at the end of the day, you exchange messages listing these three things you are grateful for. Also, you can journal it or reflect on it silently.

Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life with the Heart of a Buddha.

The way to develop the habit of savoring is to pause when something is beautiful and good and catches our attention - the sound of rain, the look of the night sky - the glow in a child's eyes, or when we witness some kindness. Pause... then totally immerse in the experience of savoring it.

We are waiting for the next moment to contain what this moment does not.

By regarding ourselves with kindness, we begin to dissolve the identity of an isolated, deficient self. This creates the grounds for including others in an unconditionally loving heart.

When we experience stress, the nervous system tries to control things. Part of waking up is discovering what we are beyond that controlling organism.

When we relax about imperfection, we no longer lose our life moments in the pursuit of being different and in the fear of what is wrong.

I decided to write 'True Refuge' during a major dive in my own health. Diagnosed with a genetic disease that affected my mobility, I faced tremendous fear and grief about losing the fitness and physical freedom I loved.

Just remember that everyone is struggling; everyone is living with fear and uncertainty and it doesn't matter what their politics are.

Awakening self-compassion is often the greatest challenge people face on the spiritual path.

We're so used to presenting ourselves and getting approval according to our achievements that it's difficult to be authentic and trust that we'll be accepted just as we are.

Mindfulness is a pause - the space between stimulus and response: that's where choice lies.

There is something wonderfully bold and liberating about saying yes to our entire imperfect and messy life.

The trance of unworthiness keeps the sweetness of belonging out of reach. The path to "the sweetness of belonging," is acceptance - acceptance of ourselves and acceptance of others without judgment.

Self-judgment continues to arise - it's a strong habit - but the fact that I made a conscious commitment to recognize it has helped me stop feeding the story of being unworthy.

There is so much division in this world. So what is really the path of healing? It can begin in this moment, by embracing the life that`s here.

I registered the dukkha of self-aversion with such clarity that I knew there was no freedom unless I could love this life without holding back. This didn't mean I was going to ignore my flaws and stop seeking to improve what I could. But in the deepest way, I was not going to fixate on the conclusion that something was wrong with me.

If I can forgive the attachment in myself and open to the vulnerability that's underneath it, then rather than fixating on another person to satisfy my need, I'm actually going right to where the needs come from and able to bring a real healing.

Our greatest longing is to be intimate.

A lot of times in spiritual communities, detachment is considered to be an expression of being spiritually evolved when often, we have want and fear around being in relationship with each other.

Managing life from our mental control towers, we have separated ourselves from our bodies and hearts.

I mentioned earlier the two wings of awareness. The first step is recognizing the fear of getting close to others - this honest witnessing of where it is in the body, where it is in your beliefs.The other wing regards what's seen with kindness and compassion.

It's the beginning of opening to love. Even if there's not much feeling of compassion toward oneself, just say, "It's okay, sweetheart," or "I'm sorry and I love you."

I think of depression as the mechanism that pushes down the pain of that loss. It tries to distance us from the loss but it lowers our whole energy level. I think that's a pervasive way we end up responding to loss or the anticipation of loss. Natural but not necessary.

When you are in touch with your body and heart, it allows you to then be in the world and act with intention and clarity and kindness.

Meditation can change the flavor of the season.

Whatever you encounter, may that be part of the path.

The mistake we make is that when we're feeling another person is not treating us in the way that makes us feel secure and loved, we fixate our attention on that person and what's wrong with them. We also fixate on what's wrong with us. Instead, we can bring forward two wings of awareness: the wing of mindfulness (noticing what's going on inside us) and the wing of kindness (compassion to what's going on inside us).

Where desire ends up causing suffering is when it fixates.

As I noticed feelings and thoughts appear and disappear, it became increasingly clear that they were just coming and going on their own. . . . There was no sense of a self owning them.

Longing, felt fully, carries us to belonging.

Most of us grew up with a very damaging story that something is wrong with us. Gradually - or as in my case, suddenly - we become resolved not to believe this anymore. It takes a dedicated practice to follow up on that resolution, because the conditioning is very strong to keep generating self-demeaning stories.

If [kids] get into loving relationships, they're afraid they'll be found wanting, won't have the looks or body shape our culture deems worthy. Many of us feel we're falling short and if we start feeling close to another person, that we'll be found out and rejected.

Our kids go to school and they come out feeling not intelligent, not desirable, not attractive or appealing to others.

Unless we're completely awake, have a degree of that. We tense against love and hold on in a way that doesn't let it flow. When that's really strong, the key piece to freeing our hearts is self-compassion.