Enlightenment is a direct experience with reality.

The most difficult times for many of us are the ones we give ourselves.

Anything we experience, no matter how challenging, can become an open pathway to awakening.

Knowing pain is a very important ingredient of being there for another person.

Usually we regard loneliness as an enemy. Heartache is not something we choose to invite in. It's restless and pregnant and hot with the desire to escape and find something or someone to keep us company. When we can rest in the middle, we begin to have a nonthreatening relationship with loneliness, a relaxing and cooling loneliness that completely turns our usual fearful patterns upside down.

Only in an open, nonjudgmental space can we acknowledge what we are feeling. Only in an open space where we're not all caught up in our own version of reality can we see and hear and feel who others really are, which allows us to be with them and communicate with them properly.

The essence of our whole path is in that place of discomfort, and what do we do with it?