When you are fully present with everyone you meet, you relinquish the conceptual identity you made for them - your interpretation of who they are and what they did in the past - and are able to interact without the egoic movements of desire and fear. Attention, which is alert stillness, is the key.

When you complain, you make yourself a victim. When you speak out, you are in power.

The power of the heart is to be connected with who you are at the deepest level. The power of the heart is the power of life itself, the power of the very intelligence that pervades and underlies the entire universe. It is a power that lies at the very heart of the universe. So to live in connectedness with that, then you are in touch with the power of the heart.

To be identified with your mind is to be trapped in time: the compulsion to live almost exclusively through memory and anticipation. This creates an endless preoccupation with past and future and an unwillingness to honor and acknowledge the present moment and allow it to be. The compulsion arises because the past gives you an identity and the future holds the promise of salvation, of fulfillment in whatever form. Both are illusions.

When you look at a tree and perceive its stillness, you become still yourself. You connect with it at a very deep level. You feel a oneness with whatever you perceive in and through stillness.

If you are trying to get from here to there, and you already are late, you know that you are late, and yet you are aligned with the present moment while you are stuck in a traffic jam. You are totally accepting of the moment.

Nonresistance, nonjudgment, and nonattachment are the three aspects of true freedom and enlightened living.