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

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.

the original sense of genius means attendant spirit—being in the care of something unseen but near. It is really another definition of wholeness or God,

The live bough bends. The dead twig snaps.

a sense of urgency is a terrible illusion, a trick that happens, again and again, because life inside our skin and outside our skin are forever different.

To change whatever has ceased to function within us. To shed whatever we are carrying that is no longer alive. To cast off our dead skin because dead skin can't feel. Dead eyes can't see. Dead ears can't hear. And without feeling, there is no chance of wholeness, and wholeness remains our best chance to survive the pain of breaking.

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

In actuality, this moment of ecstasy, of holding nothing back, can be experienced not just during sex, but in the being and doing and truth telling of all our relationships—in the ecstatic moment when we allow ourselves to be completely revealed and held at the same time. In this daring and fragile moment, the heart rehearses all its gifts: being w

Love yourself the way you love your children or your dog or your dearest friend, without reservation.

We must be watchful, for we suffer both the impulse to separate and own and the impulse to unify and belong. As our eyes shut and open repeatedly, we as builders take things apart and put them together repeatedly. Yet as wakefulness depends on keeping the eyes open, healing often depends on keeping things joined. In love, in friendship, in seeking