Jack Kornfield Quotes

The hardest thing to remember is that what we each really want is the truth of our lives, good or bad. Not rocking the boat is an illusion that can only be maintained by the unspoken agreement not to feel and in the long run it never really works. Let go of saving the boat and save the passengers instead.

Be brave enough to break your own heart.

I was going through the hardest thing, also the greatest thing, for any human being to do; to accept that which is already within you, and around you.

I know how hard it is to live your life with your wounds exposed to heal other people

To live with courage, purpose, and connection - to be the person whom we long to be - we must again be vulnerable. We must ... show up, and let ourselves be seen.

I had a lot of conversations with my family, my close friends, with my pastor, with God, and kind of came to a revelation that maybe I should be honest with myself about who I am and let that person - this woman who has lived inside me for my entire life - finally have an opportunity to live.

When you feel good is when you're not afraid to feel the worst.

It's that beautiful thing to love your weaknesses, your insecurities, and then put them all on blast. That's why I started writing, and that's why it was so hard to do it in public.

I gave myself permission to feel and experience all of my emotions. In order to do that, I had to stop being afraid to feel. In order to do that, I taught myself to believe that no matter what I felt or what happened when I felt it, I would be okay.

I don't think that bravery is about skin. Bravery is about a willingness to show emotional need.

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.

It's not that I want to necessarily avoid my darker moments, but I don't capitalize them and put a crown on them and tote them around as the answer anymore.

I always thought I could be brave and charge at things and smash 'em and walk away, but it takes courage to sit and look at things and say, 'This is what I am. How do I fix it? How do I live with it?'

I just have to open up when I'm on stage because that's what I did in my life. I want people to know what I've been through, and the love and the honesty that I have kept inside me. I just open my heart and let my heart go free.

It's OK to feel pain and experience it. I'm not trying to fix myself. My suffering has given me so much.

When you start to find balance, then you start to ask more important questions, like, 'Who am I really?' That's when you start seeing that every single person around you is a human being just doing the best that they can.

I have a duty to speak the truth as I see it and share not just my triumphs, not just the things that felt good, but the pain, the intense, often unmitigated pain. It is important to share how I know survival is survival and not just a walk throught the rain.

Letting go is fearless. Then, moving on and being alright, that’s fearless too.

It takes courage...to endure the sharp pains of self discovery rather than choose to take the dull pain of unconsciousness that would last the rest of our lives.

The full life is filled with vulnerability, not defense. You face whatever feeling there is.

Being a good steward of your pain. . . . It involves being alive to your life. It involves taking the risk of being open, of reaching out, of keeping in touch with the pain as well as the joy of what happens because at no time more than at a painful time do we live out of the depths of who we are instead of out of the shallows.

Someone needs to encourage us not to brush aside what we feel. Not to be ashamed of the love and grief that it arouses in us. Not to be afraid of pain. Someone needs to encourage us: that this soft spot in us could be awakened, and that to do this would change our lives.

The only way to ease our pain is to experience it fully. Learn to stay with uneasiness, learn to stay with the tightening, so that the habitual chain reaction doesn't continue to rule your life.

Compassion practice is daring. It involves learning to relax and allowing ourselves to move gently toward what scares us.