If it's painful, you become willing not just to endure it but also to let it awaken your heart and soften you. You learn to embrace it.

Opening to the world begins to benefit ourselves and others simultaneously. The more we relate with others, the more quickly we discover where we're blocked.

When we practice generating compassion, we can expect to experience our fear of pain. Compassion practice is daring. It involves learning to relax and allow ourselves to move gently toward what scares us. The trick to doing this is to stay with emotional distress without tightening into aversion, to let fear soften us rather than harden into resistance.

When we start out on a spiritual path we often have ideals we think we're supposed to live up to. We feel we're supposed to be better than we are in some way. But with this practice you take yourself completely as you are. Then ironically, taking in pain - breathing it in for yourself and all others in the same boat as you are heightens your awareness of exactly where you're stuck.

We tend to forget that we are part of the natural scheme of things.

The most complete and true happiness comes in moments when you feel right there, completely present, with no ideas about good and bad, right and wrong - just a sense of open heart and open mind.

Most of us do not take these situations as teachings. We automatically hate them. We run like crazy. We use all kinds of ways to escape - all addictions stem from this moment when we meet our edge and we just can't stand it. We feel we have to soften it, pad it with something, and we become addicted to whatever it is that seems to ease the pain.