Consciousness is a vast ocean and thinking is the waves & ripples on the surface of the ocean.

If the structures of the human mind remain unchanged, we will always end up re-creating the same world, the same evils, the same dysfunction.

Stop looking outside for scraps of pleasure or fulfillment, for validation, security, or love - you have a treasure within that is infinitely greater than anything the world can offer.

What you encounter at your destination once you get there depends on the quality of this one step. Another way of putting it: What the future holds for you depends on your state of consciousness now.

This is why very often you find educated people in the media who look at spiritual books but they are so identified with their thought process, they don't get it. They write reviews or articles and they miss the whole point. They can't see the essence. It's not their fault; it's not them personally. It's the human condition and its mind-identified state. And intelligence in itself doesn't help. You can have two or three Ph.D.s; it doesn't get you any closer to spiritual realization. In fact, you might be more distant.

It is very hard to tell when I started to be a spiritual teacher. There was a time when occasionally somebody would come and ask me questions. One could say at that point I became a spiritual teacher, although the term did not occur to me then.

To have your attention in the Now is not a denial of what is needed in your life. It is recognition of what is primary.