Generally speaking, we regard discomfort in any form as bad news. But for practitioners or spiritual warriors – people who have a certain hunger to know what is true – feelings like disappointment, embarrassment, irritation, resentment, anger, jealousy, and fear, instead of being bad news, are actually very clear moments that teach us where it is that we’re holding back. They teach us to perk up and lean in when we feel we’d rather collapse and back away. They’re like messengers that show us, with terrifying clarity, exactly where we’re stuck. This very moment is the perfect teacher, and, lucky for us, it’s with us wherever we are.

Pema Chödron

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

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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
• What is in front of us right in the moment
• Flooding the world with your kindness
• No fresh air