When we come face to face with the fear and pain in our psyche, we stand at the gateway to tremendous renewal and freedom. Our deepest nature is awareness, and when we fully inhabit that, we love freely and are whole… When we stop fighting the energy that has been bound in fear, it naturally releases into the boundless sea of awareness. The more we awaken from the grip of fear, the more radiant and free becomes the heart.
Tara Brach, Radical Acceptance
Your way of explaining events to yourself determines how helpless you can become, or how energized, when you encounter the everyday setbacks as well as momentous defeats.
Martin Seligman, Learned Optimism
We are always in a perpetual state of being created and creating ourselves. We will never be the same, and we have never been quite the way we are right in this moment. This emergence of being as we flow from state to state is characterized by an underlying sense that there is an incredible amount of freedom and cohesion within the system in a given moment. As a person’s states of mind emerge in ways determined by the systems own constraints and by the external constraints of interpersonal connections with others, the self is perpetually being created
Dan Siegel, The Developing Mind; How Relationships and the Brain interact to Shape who we are
At any given moment, you can choose to follow the chain of thoughts, emotions, and sensations that reinforce a perception of yourself as vulnerable and limited — or you can remember that you true nature is pure, unconditioned, and incapable of being harmed.
If you’re determined to think of yourself as limited, fearful, vulnerable, or scarred by past experience, know only that you have chosen to do so.
The opportunity to experience yourself differently is always available.
Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche
People [have always] faced the same kinds of issues we face now, but with different window dressing. In the time of the Buddha men and women were arguing, gossiping, judging others, losing their perspective, overreacting, sexualizing their experiences, chasing after greener pastures, obsessing about nonessentials, feeling lonely and creating too many pipe dreams. Nothing has fundamentally altered.
How many of us, for example, are still convinced, mature as we may be, that if our partner would only change, or if we could meet the perfect person, everything would be fine? These are the dysfunctional myths and illusions that drive our lives in very dissatisfying directions. How many people remember the song from the musical Fiddler on the Roof – “If I were a Rich Man…” What is your “big if”? The big “if” that leads you away from wisdom and reality?
Lama Surya Das, Awakening the Buddha within
Courage is like – it’s a habitus, a habit, a virtue:
you get it by courageous acts.
It’s like you learn to swim by swimming.
You learn courage by couraging.
Mary Daly
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