The obvious predicament that the intellect has a difficult time with is the sneaking realization that more is never enough. Or, more is maybe enough for a moment, but it doesn’t last.

We recognize now that we are bringing our external world genuinely and honestly into harmony with our inner perceptions, and we don’t need to try so hard to create an external space to prove anything. We’re learning not to overkill with our intellect, not to try to think our way into holiness, because it just ends up being another prison, and we

It might turn out that your Aunt Thelma was Buddha. She was cooking chicken soup, and you went to India and Tibet for forty years looking for somebody who looked like Buddha. You totally despaired, and in the despair, you gave up all your hope and all your models. You come home, and you walk in and there she is. You look, and you fall on your face

The only time we might need to intervene with people is when their actions are limiting the opportunities for other human beings to be free.

The only reason a totally free being would choose to stay within the illusion is to relieve the suffering of all beings. This is the time when what’s known as “the Bodhisattva Vow” is taken. This is the only moment it’s real. Up until then it’s phony—it’s our karma working out. The moment we choose to come back, we have to push against that force

But the predicament is that enlightenment is not an achievement; enlightenment is a transformation of being. And the achiever goes as well as the achievement.

A conscious being uses everything. Nothing goes down the disposal—including the moment of death, which can be the most profound moment of the incarnation for growth and awakening when we are ready to use it that way.

Now, whether our wings are being singed, whether the fire purifies us or destroys us, depends on who we think we are, because the fire can only burn our stash of clinging. The fire doesn’t burn itself. And in truth, we are the fire.

It does seem that we have to be somebody before we can become nobody.