Discovering a richer quality of being-ness means to keep surrendering and letting go of resistance.

The Buddha never intended to make desire itself the problem. When he said craving causes suffering, he was referring not to our natural inclination as living beings to have wants and needs, but to our habit of clinging to experience that must, by nature, pass away.

By running from what we fear, we feed the inner darkness

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).

Underneath the stress is fear, and the biggest is our own personal fear of failure.

Pain is not wrong. Reacting to pain as wrong initiates the trance of unworthiness. The moment we believe something is wrong, our world shrinks and we lose ourselves in the effort to combat the pain.

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.