Unlike the frantic pilots, we stop asking, “What do I do next?”

Finally one day came a shifting-into-place, an awakening: not “right” compared to what? Oh, my word, I’d been trying to make canned Pillsbury biscuits! Then came an exquisite moment of actually tasting my biscuits without comparing them to some (previously hidden) standard. They were wheaty, flaky, buttery, “sunny, earthy, real” (as Rilke’s sonnet

Seeing what is true, we hold what is seen with kindness.

The way out of our cage begins with accepting absolutely everything about ourselves and our lives, by embracing with wakefulness and care our moment-to-moment experience. By accepting absolutely everything, what I mean is that we are aware of what is happening within our body and mind in any given moment, without trying to control or judge or pull

Radical Acceptance is not resignation.

But Radical Acceptance also means not overlooking another important truth: the endless creativity and possibility that exist in living. By accepting the truth of change, accepting that we don’t know how our life will unfold, we open ourselves to hope so that we can move forward with vitality and will.

for the aspiring bodhisattva, suffering is the trusted gateway to awakening the heart.

The trance of unworthiness doesn’t always show up as overt feelings of shame and deficiency. When I told a good friend that I was writing about unworthiness and how pervasive it is, she took issue. “My main challenge isn’t shame, it’s pride,” she insisted.

the comfort of feeling spacious might tempt me to avoid feeling the unpleasantness of my immediate experience. Being genuinely awake in the midst of fear requires the willingness to actively contact the sensations of fear. This intentional way of engaging with fear I call “leaning into fear.”