Quotes from Susan Piver

brilliant life is not about being untouched by sorrow but has more to do with relaxing and allowing the world to touch you. It's way braver to open yourself to the world than to wall yourself off from it.

The bad news is, you're falling through the air, nothing to hang on to, no parachute. The good news is, there is no ground. Chögyam Trungpa

if you try to prevent strong emotion, you're always on the defensive. If you never put up your guard in the first place, you have nothing to defend and therefore nothing to worry about.

most pressing questions: Who am I? What am I doing with my life? How can what I most desire (love) be also what is most treacherous? Losing love re-focuses all of your attention away from intellectual, physical, or professional concerns and places it instead on love itself, to beg perhaps the most critical question of all: How can I permit myself to love when the possibility of loss cannot be denied? These now become the most important questions in the world and they demand exploration.

A Dark Night of the Soul is not the universe's attempt to rob you of happiness or beat you into submission—on the contrary. It is a natural cycle of life that teaches you the meaning of happiness beyond pleasure. It offers the opportunity for liberation from inauthenticity. If you acknowledge the Dark Night and open to it, it will teach you extraordinary lessons about who you are and what your life is about.

questions continued to come. I wrote them down. And one by one, Duncan and I answered them, together. Some questions took days to answer. Some took a moment. Others had no answer, and that in itself was important. In every case, we learned something about our relationship and each other. We were delighted, appalled, infuriated and/or mystified by each other's answers.

The Buddhadharma is not, however, associated with the practice of being a candy-ass.

It starts with the realization that a broken heart is nothing to be ashamed of. It is an altered state, an experience of sacred openness.

Although it is tremendously disorienting on one hand, on another, you will never see as clearly as you do when your heart is broken. If you've ever wanted to get at the truth about your life, your character and destiny, the depth of your friendships, you can choose to see these things now.

Coming out of your head and into your environment can help cut anxiety for a few moments, and in those moments you have a chance to regain equilibrium.

to counter longing, pay attention to the present moment; to counter rage, invite sadness; and to reverse disheartenment, introduce an element of precision to your environment.

There is a way, however, to turn poison into medicine. Depending on how it's used, a single substance can be either poisonous or medicinal.

real fearlessness is the product of tenderness. It comes from letting the world tickle your heart, your raw and beautiful heart. You are willing to open up, without resistance or shyness, and face the world … If a person does not feel alone and sad, he cannot be a [spiritual] warrior at all…

Confidence is the willingness to be as ridiculous, luminous, intelligent, and kind as you really are, without embarrassment.

A Dark Night is a mental and emotional state of despair that arises when something is so painful that it blots out all other considerations and makes carrying on as usual out of the question.

Fearlessness requires attention and receptivity-it takes focus to stand in the still eye of a tornado and not be swept away by it.