Practice often entails confronting the unpalatable until one’s reactions have cooled; then by holding the attention steady it becomes clear that ‘things’ are actually only ‘the way things appear,’ an appearance compounded by reactions and assumptions, reinforced by the resistance to change and letting go.
Ajahn Sucitto
By weaving our opinions, prejudices, strategies and emotions into a solid reality, we try to make a big deal out of ourselves, out of our pain, out of our problems. But things are not as solid, predictable or seamless as they seem.
We habitually string our thoughts together into a story that tricks us into believing that our identity, our happiness, our pain and our problems are all solid and separate entities. In fact, like our thoughts all these constructs are constantly changing.
Pema Chodron, Comfortable with Uncertainty
The very presence of your breath and of your body is one of the most astonishing things in the universe, and it offers the continual opportunity to start over. This awareness allows us to start the entire project of our life over, to reinitiate all the threads of our thought, grounding it all in the immediate experience of our body. What an incredible relief it is to understand that the ultimate place of pilgrimage is right in the center of our very own heart
Richard Freeman
In our obsessive wish to arrive, we often forget the most important thing, which is the journey.
Paolo Coehlo
We meet ourselves time and again in a thousand disguises on the path of life
Jung
The truth is that every fresh experience has this dizziness of freedom that we must move through. Every time we reach beyond what is familiar, there is this necessary acclimation to what is new. It is the doorway to all learning. We needn’t be afraid of it or give it too much power. We simply have to keep leaning into what we are learning.
Mark Nepo, The Book of Awakening
