When you first start out don't set yourself a lofty goal of sitting down to meditate for twenty minutes. Aim instead for ten minutes or even five minutes - utilizing those few moments when you find yourself willing or even desiring just to take a break from the daily grind to observe your mind rather than drifting off into daydreams.

If we can allow some space within our awareness and rest there, we can respect our troubling thoughts and emotions, allow them to come, and let them go. Our lives may be complicated on the outside, but we remain simple, easy, and open on the inside.

Practicing discipline involves continually working to find space in our patterns, to find the gaps in the images we hold about ourselves. It also means finding the gaps in our ideas about others, releasing images that we hold about a manager, a coworker, a friend, or a partner.

A mantra is basically a means of talking with your thoughts and feelings. It's a time-honored method sometimes referred to as prayer, but really it's an opening of a conversation between the heart and the mind.

Be kind to yourself as you proceed along this journey. This kindness, in itself, is a means of awakening the spark of love within you and helping others to discover that spark within themselves.

Your emotional understanding about the preciousness of your human birth comes through conscious, repetitive mind training.

Let yourself become that space that welcomes any experience without judgement.