Without being aware of it, you take many things as being your identity: your body, your race, your beliefs, your thoughts.

Let go of the battle. Breathe quietly and let it be. Let your body relax and your heart soften. Open to whatever you experience without fighting.

To live life is to make a succession of errors. Understanding this can bring us great ease and forgiveness for ourselves and others.

The basic principle of spiritual life is that our problems become the very place to discover wisdom and love.

To let go in the deepest recesses of the heart, to release all struggle and wanting, leads us to that knowing which is timeless.

We need courage and strength, a kind of warrior spirit. But the place for this warrior strength is in the heart. We need energy, commitment, and courage not to run from our life nor to cover it over with any philosophy-mate rial or spiritual. We need a warrior’s heart that lets us face our lives directly, our pains and limitations, our joys and possibilities.

Most of us have spent our lives caught up in plans, expectations, ambitions for the future; in regrets, guilt or shame about the past. To come into the present is to stop the war.