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

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

A further sign of health is that we don't become undone by fear and trembling, but we take it as a message that it's time to stop struggling and look directly at what's threatening us.

I can't overestimate the importance of accepting ourselves exactly as we are right now, not as we wish we were or think we ought to be.

Nobody else can really begin to sort out for you what to accept and what to reject in terms of what wakes you up and what makes you fall asleep. No one else can really sort out for you what to accept - what opens up your world - and what to reject - what seems to keep you going round and round in some kind of repetitive misery.

Relaxing with something as familiar as loneliness is good discipline for realizing the profundity of the unresolved moments of our lives. We are cheating ourselves when we run away from the ambiguity of loneliness.....Rather than persecuting yourself or feeling that something terribly wrong is happening, right there in the moment of sadness and longing, could you relax and touch the limitless space of the human heart?

At some point, we realize that what we do for ourselves benefits others, and what we do for others benefits us.