Next, feel your heart, literally placing your hand on your chest if you find that helpful. This is a way of accepting yourself just as you are in that moment, a way of saying, "This is my experience right now, and it's okay." Then go into the next moment without any agenda.

Letting there be room for not knowing is the most important thing of all. When there's a big disappointment, we don't know if that's the end of the story. It may just be the beginning of a great adventure. Life is like that. We don't know anything. We call something bad; we call it good. But really we just don't know.

What if rather than being disheartened by the ambiguity, the uncertainty of life, we accepted it and relaxed into it?

The painful thing is that when we buy into disapproval,we are practicing disapproval. When we buy into harshness,we are practicing harshness.

It has a lot to do with developing patience, not with the check-out person so much, but with your own pain that arises, the rawness and the vulnerability, and sending some kind of warmth and love to that rawness and soreness. I think that's how we have to practice.

Generosity is an activity that loosens us up. By offering whatever we can - a dollar, a flower, a word of encouragement - we are training in letting go.

The idea of karma is that you continually get the teaching that you need to open your heart.