I woke up early one morning a couple of years ago and felt the tenderness of my being alone, the bitter sweetness of it. It has many colors, being alone. I walked out into my living room and I can say honestly that everything was pouring with life - the red sofa, the chairs with their patterns of roses, even the coffee table with its scattering of books. Everything was alive with the presence of being. Seeing the world though those eyes, I realized that I could never really be alone.

Struggle has a natural place in our life, but the fight or flight syndrome is often false struggle. There are times for that but we can have that reaction in areas of our life where it's not successful. Areas that concern existential issues or qualities of life - like meaning or purpose or love. These things actually come to us more as we let go of struggling to achieve them.

Most of us make an effort to do and be the best we can be, which leads to a distinction we need to make between the notion of struggle and the notion of effort.

The American culture especially, and Western culture in general, urges us to not only become the best that we can be, but also win against the competition.

I bring my attention to my hands on the steering wheel and notice how the chatter in my mind begins to fall away as my breathing slows. I'm awake and alive, simply driving the car going where I need to go, on time and in time. A still point of the turning world. With that awareness, I bring my attention into my body, and the body is the doorway to the timeless, because the body is always where we are and always in the present moment.

Each of us is already special in the sense that nobody has the unique pattern of potentialities that anyone else has.

If we're trying to get the perfect house, the perfect relationship or the perfect job, it's likely there's some kind of fear driving us beyond the natural wish to improve. It's really the refusal to acknowledge that life - including ourselves - is simply not perfect.