A wound does not destroy us. It activates our self-healing powers. The point is not to "put it behind you" but to keep benefiting from the strength it has awakened.

Early fear was felt cellularly and was indeed real. Defensive postures were necessary, but defenses generalize cellularly in adulthood and do not expire. It takes conscious work to undo them. Ironically, as long as we keep using defenses, we actually maintain the original force of the fear.

When we notice a connection between our present fears and their origins in early life, we are finding out how much of our identity is designed by fear. Is fear the architect of me?

In mindful grief, we become the landing strip that allows any feelings to arrive. Some crash, some land softly. Some harm us, but none harm us in a lasting way. We remain as they taxi away or as their wreckage is cleared away. We can trust that we will survive.

Humility means accepting reality with no attempt to outsmart it.

A wound does not destroy us. It activates our self-healing powers. The point is not to "put it behind you" but to keep benefiting from the strength it has awakened.

In a true you-and-I relationship, we are present mindfully, nonintrusively, the way we are present with things in nature.We do not tell a birch tree it should be more like an elm. We face it with no agenda, only an appreciation that becomes participation: 'I love looking at this birch' becomes 'I am this birch' and then 'I and this birch are opening to a mystery that transcends and holds us both.