Anxiety, heartbreak, and tenderness mark the in-between state. It’s the kind of place we usually want to avoid. The challenge is to stay in the middle rather than 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. By not knowing, not hoping to know, and not acting like we know what’s happening, we begin to access our inner strength.
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:
- The first mark of existence
- Being in the middle of nowhere
- A flexible identity
- Our Shared Humanity
- Idiot Compassion
- Cultivating equanimity
- Compassion takes courage
- Abiding in openness
- The essence of generosity
- Doing all with one intention
- Threefold purity
- Stay!
- Forgive into freshness
- Our true nature and condition
- Nothing and no one is fixed
- Whatever we encounter
- Being inspired by everyday good fortune
- The anxiety of opening
- Everyday uncertainty