Even a few moments of offering lovingkindness can reconnect you with the purity of your loving heart.

The mistake we make is that when we're feeling another person is not treating us in the way that makes us feel secure and loved, we fixate our attention on that person and what's wrong with them. We also fixate on what's wrong with us. Instead, we can bring forward two wings of awareness: the wing of mindfulness (noticing what's going on inside us) and the wing of kindness (compassion to what's going on inside us).

I think the reason Buddhism and Western psychology are so compatible is that Western psychology helps to identify the stories and the patterns in our personal lives, but what Buddhist awareness training does is it actually allows the person to develop skills to stay in what's going on.

Fear of being a flawed person lay at the root of my trance, and I had sacrificed many moments over the years in trying to prove my worth. Like the tiger Mohini, I inhabited a self-made prison that stopped me from living fully.

Along with judging myself harshly, I'd also always seen the truth of goodness in me.

With the first out breath, you are releasing worries, plans, mental tensions. With the second out breath, you are releasing physical tightness and tension. With the third out breath, you are releasing difficult emotions.

Most of us grow up with a sense of "I'm not intelligent enough." It's such a sad thing that in the West we worship a certain kind of left-brain intelligence.