Buddhism itself is all about empowering yourself, not about getting what you want.

When you open the door and invite in all sentient beings as your guests, you have to drop your agenda.

Unconditional good heart toward others is not even a possibility unless we attend to our own demons.

What happens with you when you begin to feel uneasy, unsettled, queasy? Notice the panic, notice when you instantly grab for something. (51)

Patience is not learned in safety.

None of us is ever OK, but we all get through everything just fine.

The sad part is that all we're trying to do is not feel that underlying uneasiness. The sadder part is that we proceed in such a way that the uneasiness only gets worse. The message here is that the only way to ease our pain is to experience it fully. Learn to stay. Learn to stay with uneasiness, learn to stay with the tightening, learn to stay with the itch and urge of shenpa, so that the habitual chain reaction doesn't continue to rule our lives, and the patterns that we consider unhelpful don't keep getting stronger as the days and months and years go by.