When we are open to ourselves and our own experience, and therefore, open to the world, then the world can respond.
The love of someone else is more accessible or more possible if one lives with a sense of loving embrace towards oneself because that extends out into the world.
Some of us have the good fortune of some type of natural gift, whether it's playing tennis or painting or writing.
The American culture especially, and Western culture in general, urges us to not only become the best that we can be, but also win against the competition.
When we turn our gaze to the inside, it becomes difficult to locate this familiar sense of self. To overcome that fear we need to feel special in some way.
Each of us is already special in the sense that nobody has the unique pattern of potentialities that anyone else has.
The more we enter our own gifts, the more we feel that sense of proportion. In that sense, I think our life lies in the fulfillment of those potentialities, whatever they may be.
Struggle has a natural place in our life, but the fight or flight syndrome is often false struggle. There are times for that but we can have that reaction in areas of our life where it's not successful. Areas that concern existential issues or qualities of life - like meaning or purpose or love. These things actually come to us more as we let go of struggling to achieve them.
Everything constantly changes.
Knowledge is immensely powerful and immensely useful.
The body is the doorway to the timeless, because the body is always where we are and always in the present moment.
What's not often in the present moment is the thinking mind.
Wisdom and knowledge are two different things.
A knowing of what needs to be done or what needs to be said or what needs to happen at any given time. That is wisdom and wisdom does not come from the accumulation of knowledge.
It is from that region of silence, that wordless knowing comes.
The everyday, familiar sense of self who lives in time, and that dimension which we've called presence, that is always here, that is still and quiet.
We can acquire as much knowledge as we would like with a few taps on our keyboard. That's extremely valuable, but wisdom comes again from some different dimension.
We live in an age of knowledge, with the great god Google, that we can refer to at any time on any subject.
Most of us make an effort to do and be the best we can be, which leads to a distinction we need to make between the notion of struggle and the notion of effort.
We have to be on time every day for one thing or another, so how can we be on time and yet not in time at the same time?
When we're fully engaged in the present moment, no matter what we're doing, the question of meaning never seems to arise. It's because we feel fulfilled and that is inherently meaningful.
I've come to see that the way my life shows up is actually my purpose.
If you want to know your purpose, look at the unfolding of your life, because that is your gift to the world. It may not look spectacular, but nobody else has the precise life that you do. It's a gift no one else can offer.
Practice remembrance of the present moment, again and again.
The capacity to become aware of the givens of our existence - such as change - and to actually welcome those as just part of our human experience releases the struggle.
