You can think of spiritual practice as a kind of spiritual re-parenting ... You're offering yourself the two qualities that make up good parenting: understanding - seeing yourself for who you truly are - and relating to what you see with unconditional love.

I mentioned earlier the two wings of awareness. The first step is recognizing the fear of getting close to others - this honest witnessing of where it is in the body, where it is in your beliefs.The other wing regards what's seen with kindness and compassion.

If our hearts are ready for anything, we are touched by the beauty and poetry and mystery that fill our world.

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.

Sometimes the easiest way to appreciate ourselves is by looking through the eyes of someone who loves us.

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).

Making a U-turn from our thoughts to our feelings re-connects us to our own inner experience and creates the grounds for connecting with others in a more authentic way. It's a movement from head to heart.