We have a choice. We can spend our whole life suffering because we can't relax with how things really are, or we can relax and embrace the open-endedness of the human situation, which is fresh, unfixated, unbiased.

Awareness is the key. Do we see the stories that we're telling ourselves and question their validity?

There's nothing more important on our spiritual path than developing gentleness to oneself.

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.

The next time you lose heart and you can’t bear to experience what you’re feeling, you might recall this instruction: change the way you see it and lean in. Instead of blaming our discomfort on outer circumstances or on our own weakness, we can choose to stay present and awake to our experience, not rejecting it, not grasping it, not buying the stories that we relentlessly tell ourselves. This is priceless advice that addresses the true cause of suffering—yours, mine, and that of all living beings.

The real thing that we renounce is the tenacious hope that we could be saved from being who we are.

There isn't anything except your own life that can be used as ground for your spiritual practice. Spiritual practice is your life, twenty-four hours a day.