This genuine heart of sadness can teach us great compassion. It can humble us when we're arrogant and soften us when we are unkind.

The Buddha taught that flexibility and openness bring strength and that running from groundlessness weakens us and brings pain. But do we understand that becoming familiar with the running away is the key? Openness doesn't come from resisting our fears but from getting to know them well

Rather than becoming more relaxed, you start pulling down the shades and locking the door. When you do go out, you find the experience more and more unsettling and disagreeable. You become touchier, more fearful, more irritable than ever. The more you try to get it your way, the less you feel at home.

Let difficulty transform you. And it will. In my experience, we just need help in learning how not to run away.

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.

It's a transformative experience to simply pause instead of immediately filling up space.

By becoming intimate with how we close down and how we open up, we awaken our unlimited potential.