The challenge is to stay in the middle rather than to buy into struggle and complaint. The challenge is to let it soften us rather than make us more rigid and afraid. Becoming intimate with the queasy feeling of being in the middle of nowhere only makes our hearts more tender. When we are brave enough to stay in the middle, compassion arises spontaneously.

Pema Chödron

from the book The Places That Scare You: A Guide to Fearlessness in Difficult Times

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Further quotes from the book The Places That Scare You:

• Our Shared Humanity
• At least until you die
• Everyday uncertainty
• The anxiety of opening
• Being inspired by everyday good fortune
• The first mark of existence
• Forgive into freshness
• Compassion takes courage
• A flexible identity
• Threefold purity
• Our true nature and condition
• Awakening our unlimited potential
• Happiness
• Dissolving our self-importance
• Cultivating equanimity
• The essence of generosity
• Cultivating equanimity
• Doing all with one intention
• Stay!