The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have

in a moment of ego we refuse to put down what we carry in order to open the door. Time and time again, we are offered the chance to truly learn this: We cannot hold on to things and enter. We must put down what we carry, open the door, and then take up only what we need to bring inside.

Well, it is no secret that slowness remembers and hurry forgets; that softness remembers and hardness forgets; that surrender remembers and fear forgets.

We didn't talk about it, but it is the path off the path that brings us to God. For our hearts are just small birds waiting.

Atlas wasn't forced to hold up the world. He was convinced that if he didn't, the world would fall.

As an adult trying to be my own person, understanding which feelings are genuinely mine and which are those I have inherited is often confusing. People like me, and maybe you identify, so let me say people like us, frequently feel responsible for the emotional condition of others.

In truth, it has never been about first meeting, though this can happen, but more about first coming into view.

But there is a difference between feeling the pain of things breaking, ending, or drifting apart, and the sharper pain that comes from measuring the inevitable events of life against some ideal of how we imagine things are supposed to be. In receiving hardships this way, life is always a falling off. Life is hard enough without viewing all our pain

grateful that we have enough to eat, that we are well enough to eat. But somehow, through the living of our days, our focus narrows like a camera that shutters down, cropping out the horizon, and one day we're miffed at a diner because the eggs are runny or the hash isn't seasoned just the way we like.

When we narrow our focus, the problem seems everything.