When you completely accept this moment, when you no longer argue with what is, the compulsion to think lessens and is replaced by an alert stillness. You are fully conscious, yet the mind is not labeling this moment in any way... It is a shift from identification with form --the thought or the emotion-- to being and recognizing yourself as that which has no form -- spacious awareness.

Thought began to take over and obscured the simple yet profound joy of connectedness with being.

If you live only in one culture for the first 20 years of your life, you become conditioned without knowing it.

It's a wonderful thing to perceive the world and to interact with it and with other people and nature from that deep place of utter stillness, where the compulsion to immediately label and interpret whatever arises around you is no longer there.

Be aware of your breathing as often as you are able, whenever you remember. Do that for one year, and it will be powerfully transformative. And it's free.

And so I came to understand why some masters sometimes say, "You are already enlightened."

To awaken within the dream is our purpose now. When we are awake within the dream, the ego-created earth-drama comes to an end and a more benign and wonderous dream arises.