To me, wholeness is the key to aliveness. It is more than just physical vitality, it is radiance, coming from being at one with yourself and your experience. Life then flows through you.

If your primary focus is to get over your health problems or get past a relationship crisis so that you can return to your former life and old patterns- that is, get back to business as usual-you are not really living. The distinction is paradoxical and sometimes subtle. It's the difference between walking through your life on your way to somewhere, and walking as your life. Even if you believe that where you want to get is extremely important, that destination is secondary. Your immediate experience is what really matters. It is your life.

Your closest relationships are often the ones that have the most effect on you, but they are frequently the ones most difficult to change. These relationships are complex and have long histories. Lifetime habits of avoiding being really present with each other may exist in many of them. Family members, for instance, might want to support you, but will not necessarily know how to genuinely listen or be present with you in a way that is enlivening. . . . Even with the best intentions, it can be very difficult to get beyond the past and into the Now.

Somehow, when we no longer feel in control, we become available to deeper aliveness.

The distance between yourself and another person is the same as the distance between yourself and yourself.

The sad fact is that we're not educated to be aware and therefore able to question the reality created by our thinking. We don't realize that we must take responsibility for our thoughts to find out if they are really true, and then set aside or at least acknowledge those that are simply opinion and bias. We don't recognize that most thoughts are ultimately judgments, and that the truth of any judgment is how that judgment makes us feel.

In the Now, there really is no destination. Each moment is lived for its own sake, even as you move toward whatever you many choose to pursue. When you are focused on some outcome or achievement-or are looking forward to the day when you are able to live in conditions that you imagine will be superior to whatever currently exists-your life right now becomes just an interval on the way to the next event.