The word 'heart' can refer to an emotional bond between people, and also to the precious faculty of empathy, an 'open heart', which means sharing the feelings of another and includes an outflow of goodwill towards our fellow humans and all life forms. This, of course, is what the Dalai Lama refers to when he says "my religion is kindness", and is closely related to the ability to feel compassion.

I sometimes get a distorted view of how quickly humans are evolving, because I meet many people who are evolving beyond ego. Then I have to switch on the TV to realize, "Oh, no, it is not happening to everybody yet." But it is happening.

Use whatever challenge comes into your life as a kind of fuel for the flame of consciousness. That is done through surrender to what is. Some people may need more of that than others. If you choose presence in your daily life you may not need the drastic challenges.

The ego's form of happiness can't exist without unhappiness. The ego will be happy when something good happens but unhappy when it ends.

This new large-scale spiritual awakening is occurring primarily not within the confines of the established religions, but outside of those structures. Some of it, however, is also happening within the existing churches and religious institutions wherever the members of those congregations do not identify with rigid and exclusive belief systems whose unconscious purpose is to foster a sense of separation on which the egoic mind structures depend for their survival.

Whatever the present moment contains, accept it as if you had chosen it.

Ultimately, there is no such thing as "my consciousness," but just the one consciousness and to sense your connectedness with the one (I can sense that continuously, which is why I can say that I know this for sure) to sense that connectedness with the one consciousness that pervades the universe, which in some traditions is called God, to sense that frees you of fear, from anxiety, and takes you to a very deep place of peace, but also of heightened aliveness.