Keeping a commitment to listening has led me to my own growth, beyond any imagined dreams I may have had throughout the years.

The things that can restore us have to get in, too. This is what the wisdom of an open heart is all about. All the spiritual traditions speak of this but I love the Tibetan tradition: "A spiritual warrior always has a crack in his heart because that is how the mysteries can get in."

Repetition is not failure. Ask the waves, ask the leaves, ask the wind.

Try as we do to resist what we're given, this is the only doorway to truth. We waste too much time and energy denying or fighting where we find ourselves.

When we keep choosing between right and wrong. We spend our energy sorting life rather than living it.

To listen is to continually give up all expectation and to give our attention, completely and freshly, to what is before us, not really knowing what we will hear or what that will mean. In the practice of our days, to listen is to lean in, softly, with a willingness to be changed by what we hear.

This is the ongoing purpose of full attention: to find a thousand ways to be pierced into wholeness.