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

Our strength will continue if we allow ourselves the courage to feel scared, weak, and vulnerable. —MELODY BEATTIE

That we are returned repeatedly to the same circumstance is not always a sign of avoidance, but can mean our work around a certain issue is not done.

In truth, it is not the tissue of our humanity that defeats us, but rather our refusal to accept who we are and to live accordingly, limitations included.

And compassion, sweet compassion, is the never-ending story of how we embrace each other and forgive ourselves for not accepting our beautifully particular place in the fabric of all there is.

Time and time again, the head must be brought beneath the heart or the ego swells. If you do not bend, life will bend you. In this way, humility is accepting that your head belongs beneath your heart, with your thinking subordinate to your feeling, with your will subordinate to the higher order. This acceptance is key to receiving grace.

In all honesty, to heal from this requires as rigorous a program of recovery as alcoholics enlist, including sponsors who will love us for who we are.

Just as flowers need healthy root systems in order to blossom, feelings can only express their beauty when they are rooted cleanly within us, breaking ground in some manner, sprouting outside us. It is that delicate paradoxical inch of ground between surface and deep, between flower and root, between what is allowed out and what is allowed in, that

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

I was able to drop my replaying of wounds