In any moment, no matter how lost we feel, we can take refuge in presence and love. We need only pause, breathe, and open to the experience of aliveness within us. In that wakeful openness, we come home to the peace and freedom of our natural awareness.

Perhaps the biggest tragedy of our lives is that freedom is possible, yet we can pass our years trapped in the same old patterns...We may want to love other people without holding back, to feel authentic, to breathe in the beauty around us, to dance and sing. Yet each day we listen to inner voices that keep our life small.

Meditation helps us gain the capacity to relax, to connect with what is going on right here and right now, to connect with other people, to re-access our resourcefulness, our clarity and our ability to focus and keep an open heart.

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

I would say both Western psychology and Eastern paths would recognize that we get caught up in feeling like a separate self and an unworthy self.

The trance of unworthiness keeps the sweetness of belonging out of reach. The path to "the sweetness of belonging," is acceptance - acceptance of ourselves and acceptance of others without judgment.

In the process of deeply accepting our own inner experience, instead of being identified with a story of a limited self, we realize the compassion and wakefulness that is our essence.