A very beautiful quote from Pema Chodron that I find a lot of inspiration from:
Often the powerful moment on the spiritual journey is the moment when pain is getting very strong, and we feel we've met our edge and there's no way to pretty up. Usually we think spiritual practice is about getting rid of that moment - but actually, that is the moment from which all the patterns of concretizing, of grasping, of spinning off into all these habits to try to get ground under our feet - they all come out of that moment. So at that very moment, we can do something different. And by doing something different we can liberate ourselves.
In the practice I'm recommending, doing something different means staying with that moment. I talked about this in terms of meditation practice, how we must let the thoughts and words go and feel whatever is happening. We must change our whole view about pain and difficulty and realise that pain is a prime time for spiritual practice. You might say, "This is prime time?!" But it is prime time because at that moment, you can either harden into an old pattern or you can soften and do something different. And often doing something different, as I say, is really just staying.
May all of us continue to enjoy our practice and be well and happy =)
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