Let's say you have to catch a plane, and you are packing your suitcase and moving fast. Most people would call that stress. Most people live stressed like that all the time.

Humans eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and bad. Suddenly, they start cutting reality up into bits and pieces, which is what the thinking mind does.

You are not seeking to attain some future state. That is the fallacy of many spiritual seekers. They have an image of some state - enlightenment, or whatever they call it - they want to achieve.

It seems that most people need to experience a great deal of suffering before they will relinquish resistance and accept - before they will forgive.

You must have failed deeply on some level or experienced some deep loss or pain to be drawn to the spiritual dimension. Or perhaps your very success became empty and meaningless and so turned out to be a failure.

When the basis for your actions is inner alignment with the present moment, your actions become empowered by the intelligence of life itself.

If you are in a state of intense presence you are free of thought, yet highly alert. If your conscious attention sinks below a certain level, thought rushes in, the mental noise returns, stillness is lost, you're back in time.