Man made God in his own image.

The moment you realize you are not present, you are present.

The ego is just waiting to identify with anything. Whether it's your misery or being a great meditator, it seeks some identification.

For many years I had been deeply identified with thinking and the painful, heavy emotions that had accumulated inside. My thought activity was mostly negative, and my sense of identity was also mostly negative, although I tried hard to prove to myself and to the world that I was good enough by working very hard academically. But even after I had achieved academic success, I was happy for two weeks or three and then the depression and anxiety came back.

Whatever you want to achieve is secondary: the business, the exchange of information, whatever it may be. Yes, you do that also, but there is a deeper foundation - meeting that human being in a state of shared presence.

You are awareness, disguised as a person.

To be identified with your mind is to be trapped in time: the compulsion to live almost exclusively through memory and anticipation.