Emotional Alchemy Quotes

“To her lover a beautiful woman is a delight; / To a monk she’s a distraction; / To a mosquito, a good meal. It makes the point well: how things seem depends on the lens or filter through which we look at them.”
― Tara Bennett-Goleman, Emotional Alchemy: How the Mind Can Heal the Heart

“As we’ve seen, the task of changing a schema is two-fold: we have to unlearn the self-defeating old habit and replace it with a new, healthier one. That change is very different from mere intellectual understanding—it involves the emotional brain. It takes much persistent practice, cultivation of the ability to bring awareness to what had been unconscious behavior, and sustained effort to try out the new way of thinking and acting despite its initial awkwardness and relapses into old habit.”
― Tara Bennett-Goleman, Emotional Alchemy: How the Mind Can Heal the Heart

“It has taken years and years, starting early in childhood, for the emotional brain to acquire its repertoire of habit. Schemas like perfectionism and deprivation become ingrained through innumerable repeated episodes. It naturally takes time to undo these emotional habits and to master a healthier response.”
― Tara Bennett-Goleman, Emotional Alchemy: How the Mind Can Heal the Heart

“We start to regulate an upsetting emotion the moment we become aware of it.”
― Tara Bennett-Goleman, Emotional Alchemy: How the Mind Can Heal the Heart

“Mindfulness gives us breathing space from this conditioning.”
― Tara Bennett-Goleman, Emotional Alchemy: How the Mind Can Heal the Heart

“I realized that part of my struggle was in wishing things were different:”
― Tara Bennett-Goleman, Emotional Alchemy: How the Mind Can Heal the Heart

“with the rest of our lives: whatever the objective reality, our emotional reactions to it add another layer to the suffering.”
― Tara Bennett-Goleman, Emotional Alchemy: How the Mind Can Heal the Heart

“In any turmoil or with any problem, as Tulku Thondup says, “The greatest source of help and strength is our minds.”
― Tara Bennett-Goleman, Emotional Alchemy: How the Mind Can Heal the Heart

“There is no fixed, solid, permanent self—just a series of changing patterns of experience.”
― Tara Bennett-Goleman, Emotional Alchemy: How the Mind Can Heal the Heart

“We each have our unique ways of responding to life’s challenges, and we need to respect our own needs, temperament, and timing.”
― Tara Bennett-Goleman, Emotional Alchemy: How the Mind Can Heal the Heart

“When we see our lives as only a small part of a greater web, our perspective changes dramatically.”
― Tara Bennett-Goleman, Emotional Alchemy: How the Mind Can Heal the Heart

“Change is ceaseless.”
― Tara Bennett-Goleman, Emotional Alchemy: How the Mind Can Heal the Heart

“Greater contentment is to be found in letting go of our hopes and fears than in any clinging. These reflections on the natural laws that affect us can inspire us to turn toward spiritual practice as a refuge.”
― Tara Bennett-Goleman, Emotional Alchemy: How the Mind Can Heal the Heart

“The more often we repeat a mental pattern, the more likely it becomes in the future;”
― Tara Bennett-Goleman, Emotional Alchemy: How the Mind Can Heal the Heart

“Becoming aware of our emotional patterns gives us an idea of where our attachments—and so our clinging and misperception—are especially thick.”
― Tara Bennett-Goleman, Emotional Alchemy: How the Mind Can Heal the Heart

“Try not to get locked into your conceptual mind—it interferes with what’s happening naturally. Just let go of the schema thoughts with a mindful presence. Just stay connected to awareness and try to be mindful whenever the schema appears. Try not to be concerned about what needs to happen; healing happens by itself, if you let it, with the soothing effect of awareness.”
― Tara Bennett-Goleman, Emotional Alchemy: How the Mind Can Heal the Heart

“Understanding, too, can be a form of forgiveness.”
― Tara Bennett-Goleman, Emotional Alchemy: How the Mind Can Heal the Heart

“A schema represents an outmoded holdover from earlier learning. In other words, remind yourself, “I’m having this reaction because of what I learned to do back then, not because of what’s actually happening right now.”
― Tara Bennett-Goleman, Emotional Alchemy: How the Mind Can Heal the Heart

“A Buddhist principle holds that awareness leads to empathy.”
― Tara Bennett-Goleman, Emotional Alchemy: How the Mind Can Heal the Heart

“To some extent, raw emotions arise from a part of the brain without words.”
― Tara Bennett-Goleman, Emotional Alchemy: How the Mind Can Heal the Heart

“an example of how relationships later in life can be reparative for the emotional wounds of a schema like abandonment”
― Tara Bennett-Goleman, Emotional Alchemy: How the Mind Can Heal the Heart

“Challenge those thoughts. Remind yourself that they distort the way things really are.”
― Tara Bennett-Goleman, Emotional Alchemy: How the Mind Can Heal the Heart

“Mindfulness helps to derail schema thoughts by focusing our awareness on the here and now, simply noting what we experience without getting caught up in our thoughts or our reactions to them.”
― Tara Bennett-Goleman, Emotional Alchemy: How the Mind Can Heal the Heart

“mindfulness fills much of our attention with something other than the mental tape loops that activate our schemas.”
― Tara Bennett-Goleman, Emotional Alchemy: How the Mind Can Heal the Heart

“The act of challenging schemas can take on the warrior spirit of wrathful compassion”
― Tara Bennett-Goleman, Emotional Alchemy: How the Mind Can Heal the Heart

“The second way mindfulness disempowers schema thoughts has to do with the nature of attention itself.”
― Tara Bennett-Goleman, Emotional Alchemy: How the Mind Can Heal the Heart

“When she caught herself in such moments, she’d talk back to her deprivation schema, saying, “I’m not depriving you if I don’t eat this ice cream.”
― Tara Bennett-Goleman, Emotional Alchemy: How the Mind Can Heal the Heart

“recognize them as mere thoughts, seeing them as well-worn ruts in the mind: “Oh, I’m having those thoughts again.” As we recognize them for what they are, we break their tyranny in the mind.”
― Tara Bennett-Goleman, Emotional Alchemy: How the Mind Can Heal the Heart

“often suggest that my clients use an inner dialogue with their schemas, talking back to the thoughts rather than remaining passive.”
― Tara Bennett-Goleman, Emotional Alchemy: How the Mind Can Heal the Heart

“Having counter-thoughts ready makes it easier to challenge them, once mindfulness has brought them to your attention.”
― Tara Bennett-Goleman, Emotional Alchemy: How the Mind Can Heal the Heart