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.

As long as we are alive, we feel fear. It is an intrinsic part of our makeup, as natural as a bitter cold winter day or the winds that rip branches off trees. If we resist it or push it aside, we miss a powerful opportunity for awakening.

That non-attachment gives us the freedom to be exactly who we are.

The great gift of a spiritual path is coming to trust that you can find a way to true refuge. You realize that you can start right where you are, in the midst of your life, and find peace in any circumstance. Even at those moments when the ground shakes terribly beneath you—when there’s a loss that will alter your life forever—you can still trust that you will find your way home. This is possible because you’ve touched the timeless love and awareness that are intrinsic to who you are.

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.

I think of depression as the mechanism that pushes down the pain of that loss. It tries to distance us from the loss but it lowers our whole energy level. I think that's a pervasive way we end up responding to loss or the anticipation of loss. Natural but not necessary.

Observing desire without acting on it enlarges our freedom to choose how we live.