If our hearts are ready for anything, we can open to our inevitable losses, and to the depths of our sorrow. We can grieve our lost loves, our lost youth, our lost health, our lost capacities. This is part of our humanness, part of the expression of our love for life.

— Tara Brach

In anguish and desperation, I reached out as I had many times before to the presence I call the Beloved. This is unconditionally loving and wakeful awareness had always been a refuge for me.

— Tara Brach

In bullfighting there is an interesting parallel to the pause as a place of refuge and renewal. It is believed that in the midst of a fight, a bull can find his own particular area of safety in the arena. There he can reclaim his strength and power. This place and inner state are called his Guernica. As long as the bull remains enraged and reactive, the matador is in charge. Yet when he finds his Guernica, he gathers his strength and loses his fear. From the matador's perspective, at this point the bull is truly dangerous, for he has tapped into his power.

— Tara Brach

I recently read in the book My Stroke of Insight by brain scientist Jill Bolt 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

I was manipulating my inner experience rather than being with what was actually happening.

— Tara Brach

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 "nothing," and simply notice what you are experiencing.

— Tara Brach

Like investigation, healthy doubt arises from the urge to know what is true--it challenges assumptions or the status quo in service of healing and freedom. In contrast, unhealthy doubt arises from fear or aversion, and it questions one's own basic potential or worth, or the value of another.

— Tara Brach

My prayer became 'May I find peace... May I love this life no matter what.' I was seeking an inner refuge, an experience of presence and wholeness that could carry me through whatever losses might come.

— Tara Brach

Observing desire without acting on it enlarges our freedom to choose how we live.

— Tara Brach

On this sacred path of Radical Acceptance, rather than striving for perfection, we discover how to love ourselves into wholeness.

— Tara Brach