Jesse Martin > Jesse's Quotes

“Perhaps the biggest tragedy of our lives is that freedom is possible, yet we can pass our years trapped in the same old patterns...We may want to love other people without holding back, to feel authentic, to breathe in the beauty around us, to dance and sing. Yet each day we listen to inner voices that keep our life small.”
― Tara Brach, Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life With the Heart of a Buddha

“The boundary to what we can accept is the boundary to our freedom.”
― Tara Brach, Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life With the Heart of a Buddha

“Clearly recognizing what is happening inside us, and regarding what we see with an open, kind and loving heart, is what I call Radical Acceptance. If we are holding back from any part of our experience, if our heart shuts out any part of who we are and what we feel, we are fueling the fears and feelings of separation that sustain the trance of unworthiness. Radical Acceptance directly dismantles the very foundations of this trance.”
― Tara Brach, Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life With the Heart of a Buddha

“The emotion of fear often works overtime. Even when there is no immediate threat, our body may remain tight and on guard, our mind narrowed to focus on what might go wrong. When this happens, fear is no longer functioning to secure our survival. We are caught in the trance of fear and our moment-to-moment experience becomes bound in reactivity. We spend our time and energy defending our life rather than living it fully.”
― Tara Brach, Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life With the Heart of a Buddha

“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.”
― Tara Brach

“Nothing is wrong—whatever is happening is just “real life.”
― Tara Brach, Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life With the Heart of a Buddha

“Awakening self-compassion is often the greatest challenge people face on the spiritual path.”
― Tara Brach, True Refuge: Finding Peace and Freedom in Your Own Awakened Heart

“Learning to pause is the first step in the practice of Radical Acceptance. A pause is a suspension of activity, a time of temporary disengagement when we are no longer moving toward any goal. . . . The pause can occur in the midst of almost any activity and can last for an instant, for hours or for seasons of our life. . . . We may pause in the midst of meditation to let go of thoughts and reawaken our attention to the breath. We may pause by stepping out of daily life to go on a retreat or to spend time in nature or to take a sabbatical. . . . You might try it now: Stop reading and sit there, doing "no thing," and simply notice what you are experiencing.”
― Tara Brach, Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life With the Heart of a Buddha

“Staying occupied is a socially sanctioned way of remaining distant from our pain.”
― Tara Brach, Radical Acceptance: Awakening the Love that Heals Fear and Shame

“In the Lakota/Sioux tradition, a person who is grieving is considered most wakan, most holy. There's a sense that when someone is struck by the sudden lightning of loss, he or she stands on the threshold of the spirit world. The prayers of those who grieve are considered especially strong, and it is proper to ask them for their help.
You might recall what it's like to be with someone who has grieved deeply. The person has no layer of protection, nothing left to defend. The mystery is looking out through that person's eyes. For the time being, he or she has accepted the reality of loss and has stopped clinging to the past or grasping at the future. In the groundless openness of sorrow, there is a wholeness of presence and a deep natural wisdom.”
― Tara Brach, True Refuge: Finding Peace and Freedom in Your Own Awakened Heart

“We can’t understand the nature of reality until we let go of controlling our experience.”
― Tara Brach, True Refuge: Finding Peace and Freedom in Your Own Awakened Heart

“Perfection is not a prerequisite for anything but pain.”
― Tara Brach, True Refuge: Finding Peace and Freedom in Your Own Awakened Heart

“Whatever you think or do regularly becomes a habit, a strongly conditioned pathway in the brain. The more you think about what can go wrong, the more your mind is primed to anticipate trouble. The more you lash out in anger, the more your body and mind are geared toward aggression. The more you think about how you might help others, the more your mind and heart are inclined to be generous. Just as weight lifting builds muscles, the way you direct your attention can strengthen anxiety, hostility, and addiction, or it can lead you to healing and awakening.”
― Tara Brach, True Refuge: Finding Peace and Freedom in Your Own Awakened Heart

“Radical Acceptance reverses our habit of living at war with experiences that are unfamiliar, frightening or intense. It is the necessary antidote to years of neglecting ourselves, years of judging and treating ourselves harshly, years of rejecting this moment’s experience. Radical Acceptance is the willingness to experience ourselves and our life as it is. A moment of Radical Acceptance is a moment of genuine freedom.”
― Tara Brach, Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life with the Heart of a Buddha

“The way out of our cage begins with accepting absolutely everything about ourselves and our lives, by embracing with wakefulness and care our moment-to-moment experience.”
― Tara Brach, Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life with the Heart of a Buddha