Bright’s Reviews > When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times > Status Update

What seems undesirable in our lives doesn’t have to trigger habitual reactions. We can let it show us where we’re at and let it remind us that the teachings encourage precision and gentleness, with loving-kindness toward every moment.

When something hurts in life, we don’t usually think of it as our path or as the source of wisdom. In fact, we think that the reason we’re on the path is to get rid of this painful feeling.

We were given changes all the time. We can either cling to security, or we can let ourselves feel exposed, as if we had just been born, as if we had just popped out into the brightness of life and were completely naked.

When you fall in love, recognize it as impermanence, and let that intensify the preciousness.

The most fundamental aggression to ourselves, the most fundamental harm we can do to ourselves, is to remain ignorant by not having the courage and the respect to look at ourselves honestly and gently.

Thoughts, emotions, moods, and memories come and they go, and basic nowness is always here.

Awakeness is found in our pleasure and our pain, our confusion and our wisdom, available in each moment of our weird, unfathomable, ordinary everyday lives.

The healing comes from letting there be room for all of this to happen: room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy.

Things falling apart is a kind of testing and also a kind of healing.