While you are meditating, if your mind wanders, gently bring it back to the present moment.

Meditation teaches us to focus and to pay clear attention to our experiences and responses as they arise, and to observe them without judging them.

The first step on the journey of faith is to recognize that everything is moving onward to something else, inside us and outside... We see that a self-image we've been holding doesn't need to define us forever, the next step is not the last step, what life was is not what it is now, and certainly not what it might yet be.

As we work to reweave the strands of connection, we can be supported by the wisdom and lovingkindness of others.

Meditation clarifies our minds and opens our hearts, and brings us to unusual depth and stability of happiness, whatever life brings.

I stepped onto the spiritual path moved by an inner sense that I might find greatness of heart, that I might find profound belonging, that I might find a hidden source of love and compassion. Like a homing instinct for freedom, my intuitive sense that this was possible was the faint, flickering, yet undeniable expression of faith.

In our usual mind state, we are continually activating the process that in Buddhist terminology is known as 'bhava,' which literally means 'becoming.' In this space of becoming, we are subtly leaning forward into the future, trying to have security based on feeling that we can hold on, we can try to keep things from changing.