Sunday, October 23, 2011

Fully alive, completely awake



The essence of life is that it's challenging. Sometimes it is sweet, and sometimes it is bitter. Sometimes your body tenses, and sometimes it relaxes or opens. Sometimes you have a headache, and sometimes you feel 100 percent healthy.

From an awakened perspective, trying to tie up all the loose ends and finally get it together is death, because it involves rejecting a lot of your basic experience. There is something aggressive about that approach to life, trying to flatten out all the rough spots and imperfections into a nice smooth ride.

To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest. To live fully is to be always in no-man's-land, to experience each moment as completely new and fresh. To live is to be willing to die over and over again. From the awakened point of view, that's life.

~ Pema Chodron

The thing I seem to be practicing these days is just this. Pema Chodron has such a simple, beautiful way to express what life is and how to navigate one's way through it with grace, compassion and joy. Challenging, sweet, bitter, completely awake... How I welcome each moment!

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