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:

• Cultivating Peace
• It’s just like that
• The path of true awakening
• Undoing of old ways of seeing
• Awakening is essential
• Exposing ourselves to annihilation
• Negativity begets negativity
• Until we got it
• Fully alive
• Disappointment
• Become Familiar with Fear
• 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
• What is in front of us right in the moment
• Flooding the world with your kindness
• No fresh air