Have respect for yourself, and patience and compassion. With these, you can handle anything.

All of spiritual practice is a matter of relationship: to ourselves, to others, to life's situations.

When attachment arises in the place of love, it sees the other as separate; it grasps and needs. Attachment is conditional; it seeks control and it fear loss. Ask your heart if attachment has replaced love. If we speak to our heart, it will always tell us the truth.

Spiritual life doesn't make you a good person; you ARE a good person, you are a holy being when you are born. What spiritual life does is remind us that this is who we really are.

The ends do not justify the means. If our actions will bring harm to others, even in the service of some 'good,' they are almost certainly deluded. If our actions do not come from a kind heart, from loving courage and compassion, they are deluded. If they are based on a distinction between 'us' and 'them,' they stem from delusion. Only to the extent that we act from the wisdom of no separation, understanding how we are woven together, will our intention bring benefit.

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 become mindful … present … is really the invitation to work with the joys and the sorrows of the world, and to do so with this gift, this capacity of loving awareness, of attention that actually can be present for the whole dance.