Pema Chodron Quotes

Only to the extent that we expose ourselves over and over to annihilation can that which is indestructible in us be found.

...and that visibility which makes us most vulnerable is that which also is the source of our greatest strength.

The most authentic thing about us is our capacity to create, to overcome, to endure, to transform, to love and to be greater than our suffering.

Revelations come when you're in the thick of it, pitting yourself up against something larger than yourself.

What is hard to remember when you're in the middle of it is that when you get through to the other side, you always walk away with a gift. If you can stand in there and not walk away from it, you get transformed by it.

Only out of great vulnerability do you discover what strength you have. Having a daughter who I love with all my being has helped me mine the source of that strength to previously unknown depths.

I had to find the courage to turn my life around.

It is by going down into the abyss that we recover the treasures of life. Where you stumble, there lies your treasure.

You find strength in your moments of weakness.

Take these broken wings and learn to fly.

How do you plan a rebirth? I'm not sure you do. You just stand in the darkness until you can't endure it any long, and then you move forward until you're standing in the light.

You think you're being broken but you're really being broken open...and that's where the healing happens, in those broken places...if you'll allow it.

We stumble and fall constantly, even when we are most enlightened.

On the flip side, I've also had to struggle with saying "yes." Before I did this research and before I had my own breakdown and spiritual awakening around this work, my motto was, "Don't do anything that you're already not great at doing." Which I think is the way the majority of adults in our culture live. Authenticity is also about the courage and the vulnerability to say, "Yeah, I'll try it. I feel pretty uncomfortable and I feel a little vulnerable, but I'll try it!"

The challenge of warriorship is to step out of the cocoon, to step out into space, by being brave and at the same time gentle

If we only arrange our life in accordance with the principle which tells us that we must always trust in the difficult, then what now appears to us as the most alien will become our most intimate and trusted experience. How could we forget those ancient myths that stand at the beginning of all races, the myths about dragons that at the last moment are transformed into princesses? Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage.

I guess that one of the most important things I've learned is that nothing is ever completely bad. Even cancer. It has made me a better person. It has given me courage and a sense of purpose I never had before. But you don't have to do like I did...wait until you lose a leg or get some awful disease, before you take the time to find out what kind of stuff you're really made of. You can start now. Anybody can.

Courage is what you earn when you've been through the tough times and you discover they aren't so tough after all.

I completely lost everything, but I gained everything because I lost the fear.

I am finding that vulnerability gives me great strength, because you're not hiding anymore. It's really about being a pioneer for myself, going into the places where I am not being taught. I have to teach myself.

I had to be physically and emotionally naked, show both my body and soul. I felt emotionally vulnerable and physically exposed, it was a hard choice to make but I was intrigued since the beginning. I think that...the things that scare you the most are the ones you gotta do.

It requires courage not to surrender oneself to the ingenious or compassionate counsels of despair that would induce a man to eliminate himself from the ranks of the living; but it does not follow from this that every huckster who is fattened and nourished in self-confidence has more courage than the man who yielded to despair.

Every experience empowers you twice: First when you enter into it with a whole heart, and again when you leave it with a whole heart.

Falling is scary but good practice for life. We must fall. In love. Out of love. Into new experiences. Out of old habits. Deeper and further into ourselves. We must fall, life is falling over forward. The only choice we have is how we let go.

The process of growth is, it seems, the art of falling down. Growth is measured by the gentleness and awareness with which we once again pick ourselves up, the lightness with which we dust ourselves off, the openness with which we continue and take the next unknown step, beyond our edge, beyond our holding, into the remarkable mystery of being.