No matter what feeling comes up - numbness, irritability, shame - if I let it arise and play itself through, I naturally open into wakefulness and care.

The emotion of fear often works overtime. Even when there is no immediate threat, our body may remain tight and on guard, our mind narrowed to focus on what might go wrong. When this happens, fear is no longer functioning to secure our survival. We are caught in the trance of fear and our moment-to-moment experience becomes bound in reactivity. We spend our time and energy defending our life rather than living it fully.

When we see the secret beauty of anyone, including ourselves, we see past our judgment and fear into the core of who we truly are - not an entrapped self but the radiance of goodness.

When I'm attached, I find that I don't see the other person as clearly because I'm more caught up in what I'm wanting.

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.

Just remember that everyone is struggling; everyone is living with fear and uncertainty and it doesn't matter what their politics are.

I registered the dukkha of self-aversion with such clarity that I knew there was no freedom unless I could love this life without holding back. This didn't mean I was going to ignore my flaws and stop seeking to improve what I could. But in the deepest way, I was not going to fixate on the conclusion that something was wrong with me.