The natural wish and impetus to feel oneself to be an individual, to be special, includes standing out more than anyone else.

There is a stillness in all of us that is really the essence of who we are. A stillness and a silence that doesn't move, that doesn't go anywhere and our task is to experience that while being in time.

When we fall utterly, something gathers us up. But our falling must be without reservation, without expectation, without hope, though not hopeless. You cant plan that kind of falling. When you abandon yourself utterly to life, the river will flow, and the log jam will free. Impossible is another word for grace. Who wouldve thought it, life takes another turn, and you are gathered up into a whole different way of seeing and being.

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.

The everyday, familiar sense of self who lives in time, and that dimension which we've called presence, that is always here, that is still and quiet.

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

If you allow yourself to fully feel the life you're in - not conceptually, but viscerally in the present moment - then that is inherently meaningful.