The Essential : Discovering What Really Matters in an Age of Distraction

We see that deeper than our story lies our essence, our true nature, our full expression.

But it is only the way it is because people believe it to be that way.

I realized that humans had a power I never knew was possible: the power to be with whatever is emerging in a way that does not add more difficulty and pain. The pain is there, but something else is also there, a presence or spaciousness.

I was not able to process what was happening, and isolation seemed like the best approach. I did not want anyone to see the pain I was in because I did not want to see the pain I was in.

No change in our external world can ever satiate what is unresolved in our internal world. Then the path opens.

Our work is not to view ourselves as “someone who was hurt” or to cling to long-lasting resentment toward those we perceive as having hurt us. Instead, it is to gently uncover and understand what prevents our heart from fully opening, what limits the free expression of our true nature, what holds us back from living the life we came here to live.

We can never become enough. Time is not involved. We can only wake up to who we really are.

The real issue isn't that other people put labels on us, it’s that we believe those labels.

It is easy to focus on labels, on who is winning and who is losing, on how things appear to others, but fortunately there is a deeper place from which we can live.