Sharon Salzberg, Real Love: The Art Of Mindful Connection Quotes
Love is a living capacity within us that is always present, even when we don’t sense it.
When our focus is on seeking, perfecting, or clinging to romance, the charge is often generated by instability, rather than by an authentic connection with another person.
Real Love may run on a lower voltage, but it’s also more grounded & sustainable.
Whatever language we use use to describe healthy relationships, when we’re in them, we feel nourished by them, in body as well as mind.
Intellectually, we may appreciate that loving ourselves would give us a firm foundation but for most of us this is a leap of logic, not a leap of the heart.
Though it may seem counter intuitive to our inner perfectionist, recognizing our mistakes as valuable lessons (not failures) helps us lay the groundwork for later success.
Science tells us that love not only diminishes the experience of physical pain but can make us—and our beloveds—healthier.
When we pay attention to sensations in our bodies, we can feel that love is the energetic opposite of fear.
Love seems to open and expand us right down to the cellular level, while fear causes us to contract and withdraw into ourselves.
There is a sentiment common among most of us when it comes to love—letting go can feel scary.
Loving kindness is the practice of offering to oneself and others wishes to be happy, peaceful, healthy, strong
We begin to cultivate real love for ourselves when we treat ourselves with compassion.
A lack of real love for ourselves is one of the most constricting, painful conditions we can know.
Forgiveness is a personal process that doesn’t depend on us having direct contact with the people who have hurt us.
Forgiveness is the way we break the grip that long-held resentments have on our hearts.
Healing comes in many ways, and no one formula fits all.
Letting go is an inside job, something only we can do for ourselves.
Taking responsibility for oneself is by definition an act of kindness.
When we are willing to explore our own experiences, we open the doorway to deeper connection and intimacy.
In more ways than any of us can name, love is wrapped up with the idea of expectation.
Letting go is actually a healthy foundation upon which we can open up to real love—to giving, receiving, and experiencing it authentically and organically.
Mindfulness may help you gain insight into your role in conflicts with others, it won’t single-highhandedly help you resolve them.
These are times when sympathetic joy comes naturally, but in a complex relationship the heart may not leap up so easily.
Laughing at your pettiness probably works better than scolding yourself for it.
By experimenting with sympathetic joy, we break from the constricted world of individual struggle and see that joy exists in more places than we have yet imagined.
To celebrate someone else’s life, we need to find a way to look at it straight on, not from above with judgment or from below with envy.
There is no conflict between loving others deeply and living mindfully.
Even when we do our very best to treat those close to us with utmost respect and understanding, conflict happens. That’s life. That’s human nature.
Love is defined by difficult acts of human compassion & generosity.
Love simply, perpetually exists and that it’s a matter of psychic housekeeping to make room for it.
Everyone we interact with has the capacity to surprise us in an infinite number of ways. What can first open us up to each of our innate capacities for love is merely to recognize that.
When we identify the thoughts that keep us from seeing others as they truly are we prepare the ground for real love.
It's tough to have an authentic relationship with awe in the age of awesome, a word that has become so overused as to be drained of its meaning.
Setting the intention to practice kindness toward one’s partner or family members or friends does not preclude getting angry or upset.
We exercise kindness in any moment when we recognize our shared humanity—with all the hopes, dreams, joys, disappointments, vulnerability, and suffering that implies.
All of our actions can signify self-love or self-sabotage
We are born ready to love and be loved. It is our birthright.
With a clear intention and a willing spirit, sooner or later we experience the joy and freedom that arises when we recognize our common humanity with others and see that real love excludes no one.
What happens in our hearts is our field of freedom. As long as we carry old wounds and anger in our hearts, we continue to suffer. Forgiveness allows us to move on.
Though it may sound paradoxical, identifying our thoughts, emotions, and habitual patterns of behavior is the key to freedom & transformation.
Awareness levels the playing field. We are all humans doing the best we can.
If we stretch ourselves to open our minds, to see our shared humanity with others, we allow ourselves to see the existence of community and generosity in unexpected places.
When we open our hearts to the breadth of our experiences, we learn to tune into our needs, unique perceptions, thoughts & feelings
You are a person worthy of love. You don’t have to do anything to prove that.
In order to free ourselves from our assumptions about love, we must ask ourselves what long-held, often buried assumptions are and then face them, which takes courage, humility, and kindness.
It takes a special courage to challenge the rigid confines of our accustomed story. It’s not easy to radically alter our views about where happiness comes from but it’s eminently possible.
Taking in another’s criticism, even when it’s offered out of love, requires courage.
The good news is that opportunities for love enter our lives unpredictably, whether or not we’ve perfected self-compassion or befriended our inner critic.