Many of us prefer practices that will not cause discomfort, yet at the same time we want to be healed. But bodhichitta training doesn’t work that way. A warrior accepts that we can never know what will happen to us next. We can try to control the uncontrollable by looking for security and predictability, always hoping to be comfortable and safe. But the truth is that we can never avoid uncertainty. This not knowing is part of the adventure, and it’s also what makes us afraid.

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:

• Life preferences
• Abiding in openness
• The queasy feeling of being in the middle of nowhere
• Idiot Compassion
• The root of happiness
• Our Shared Humanity
• Being in the middle of nowhere
• 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