The waves do keep coming, so learn to surf.

Within each of us there is a silence as vast as the universe. We long for it. We can return to it.

Peace requires us to surrender our illusions of control.

The heart is like a garden. It can grow compassion or fear, resentment or love. What seeds will you plant there?

Yet I knew that spiritual practice is impossible without great dedication, energy, and commitment.

As we willingly enter each place of fear, each place of deficiency and insecurity in ourselves, we will discover that its walls are made of untruths, of old images of ourselves, of ancient fears, of false ideas of what is pure and what is not.

Finding a way to extend forgiveness to ourselves is one of our most essential tasks. Just as others have been caught in suffering, so have we. If we look honestly at our life, we can see the sorrows and pain that have led to our own wrongdoing. In this we can finally extend forgiveness to ourselves; we can hold the pain we have caused in compassion. Without such mercy, we will live our own life in exile.