Trying to run away is never the answer to being a fully human. Running away from the immediacy of our experience is like preferring death to life.

Once you create a self-justifying storyline, your emotional entrapment within it quadruples.

We're not trying to be something we aren't; rather, we're reconnecting with who we are.

Searching for happiness prevents us from ever finding it.

So war and peace start in the human heart. Whether that heart is open or whether that heart closes has global implications.

Trying to change ourselves doesn't work in the long run because we're resisting our own energy. Self-improvemen t can have temporary results, but lasting transformation occurs only when we honor ourselves as the source of wisdom and compassion.

Difficult things provoke all your irritations and bring your habitual patterns to the surface. And that becomes the moment of truth. You have the choice to launch into your lousy habitual patterns, or to stay with the rawness and discomfort of the situation and let it transform you.