Relate to the fear, not just from it. (50)

When your fear touches someone’s pain, it becomes pity, when your love touches someone’s pain, it become compassion.

There is in all our strivings a profound homesickness for God. When we touch another we touch God. When we look at a flower, its radiance, its fragrance, its stillness is another moment's experience of something deeper within. When we hold a baby, when we hear extraordinary music, when we look into the eyes of a great saint, what draws us is that deep homesickness for our true nature, for the peace and healing that is our birthright. This homesickness for God directs us toward the healing we took birth for.

Our suffering is caused by holding on to how things might have been, should have been, could have been.

Simply touching a difficult memory with some slight willingness to heal begins to soften the holding and tension around it. (74)

Sometimes pain and illness are not meant to be removed. You can't second-guess God. Rather than praying for it to go away, it's often wiser to pray that you learn as much from it as you possibly can.

Love is not what we become but who we already are