Fear is a universal experience. Even the smallest insect feels it. We wade in the tidal pools and put our finger near the soft open bodies of sea anemones and they close up. Everything spontaneously does that. It’s not a terrible thing that we feel fear when faced with the unknown. It is part of being alive, something we all share. We react against the possibility of loneliness, of death, of not having anything to hold on to. Fear is a natural reaction to moving closer to the truth.

Pema Chödron

from the book When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times

Read a random quote or see all quotes by Pema Chödron.

Further quotes from the book When Things Fall Apart:

• Opening our hearts and minds beyond limit
• The courage to look at ourselves honestly and gently
• Being with us
• Cultivating Peace
• It’s just like that
• The path of true awakening
• Undoing of old ways of seeing
• Awakening is essential
• Negativity begets negativity
• Exposing ourselves to annihilation
• Until we got it
• Fully alive
• Become Familiar with Fear
• Disappointment
• How are you
• Only in our own experience
• The Possibility of Egolessness
• Don’t Set Out to Save the World
• Drive all blames into oneself
• The perfect teacher