The next time you catch yourself starting to feel bad about anything, immediately stop everything you are doing for a moment and, as simply and as honestly as you can, ask yourself: "Is this what I really want?

Trying to change ourselves in order to please others - so that we can feel temporarily whole for having won their approval - is like cutting a flower into pieces so that it will fit into a vase.

Every relationship that we have in our lives - our contact with each person, place, and event - serves a very special, if yet to be realized purpose: They are mirrors that can serve to show us things about ourselves that can be realized in no other way.

Every truth ever discovered -- each new light that will ever burn bright -- already exists in our consciousness. All we will ever know and share about love, humility, compassion, and sacrifice -- the secrets that will reveal and then resolve old sorrows -- awaits us within ourselves. Hidden in this truth is our great promise, both as individuals and as a race of beings.

What good is any feeling we may have about ourselves, if it only lasts as long as others agree to it?

If you love getting gifts - and who doesn't - then why not accept, with gratitude, the greatest gift there is: the present moment.

Ours is the task of discovering that our true nature has nothing to fear.