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

We, like the birds, are meant to fly and sing—that's all—and all our plans and schemes are twigs of nest that, once outgrown, we leave.

So, when feeling miserable, we must look wider than what hurts. When feeling a splinter, we must, while trying to remove it, remember there is a body that is not splinter, and a spirit that is not splinter, and a world that is not splinter.

Only humans say one thing and mean another. Only we go one way and wish we were somewhere else.

By honoring all things as living, the courage to join with the Universe becomes a manner of being that can happen even while sitting still. In knowing the world this way, there is no such thing as metaphor. The wind is not like God's voice. The wind is God's voice. Memories are not images of loved ones returning to us. They are the spirits of loved

I have experienced this even in the simple issue of calling a loved one while away from home. Even when no one expects to hear from me, I can agonize over whether to call. Often, unable to withstand the discomfort of not registering some evidence of my love, I will end up going to great lengths to call.

The deep intensity of sensitivity during orgasm, for instance, is a sweet paradox in how we all cherish that moment and want to return there, over and over, and yet none of us can endure that ecstasy for very long.

In loving ourselves, we love the world. For just as fire, rock, and water are all made up of molecules, everything, including you and me, is connected by a small piece of the beginning.

small brilliant fish mouth pebbles along the ocean sand, sucking off bits of food and spitting back the rest. This is how they comb the bottom, and these small limbless creatures teach us how to suffer and move on, how to sift through what is nourishing and how to give back the rest.

the secret of life somehow always has to do with the awakening and freeing of what has been asleep.

Often we give up our right to renewal to accommodate the anxiety of those around us.