working with your own unwanted, unacceptable stuff, so that when the unacceptable and unwanted appears out there, you relate to it based on having worked with loving-kindness for yourself.

If you’re in a jealous rage and it occurs to you to actually breathe it in rather than blame it on someone else – if you get in touch with the arrow in your heart – it’s quite accessible to you at that very moment that there are people all over the world feeling exactly what you’re feeling.

There are a lot of empty boats out there that we’re always screaming at and shaking our fists at. Instead, we could let them stop our minds.

Rather than becoming more relaxed, you start pulling down the shades and locking the door. When you do go out, you find the experience more and more unsettling and disagreeable.

relate to your righteous indignation,

I felt poverty-stricken about never having had any experiences that felt like bliss, clarity, or luminosity. I began to feel depressed that I didn’t measure up to any of these glowing words. Fortunately, I put that book down and picked up something simple about just being alive with who you are right now – nothing special, no big deal, ordinary:

People get into a heavy-duty sin and guilt trip, feeling that if things are going wrong, that means they did something bad and they’re being punished.

It isn’t really something that you finally and completely “get.”

the basis of this whole teaching is that you’re never going to get everything together.”