What if the healing of the world utterly depends on the ten-thousand invisible kindnesses we offer simply and quietly throughout the pilgrimage of each human life?

Many of us incorrectly assume that a spiritual life begins when we change what we normally do in our daily life. We feel we must change our job, our living situation, our relationship, our address, our diet, or our clothes before we can truly begin a spiritual practice. And yet it is not the act but the awareness, the vitality, and the kindness we bring to our work that allows it to become sacred.

Can it then be that what we call the 'self' is fluid and elastic? It evolves, strikes a different balance with every new breath.

In the soil of the quick fix is the seed of a new problem, because our quiet wisdom is unavailable.

As we explore the nature of our gift, our goal is to move toward this kind of giving: cheerful giving that flows gently and easily, kingly giving that flows surely from who we are. As we encounter the questions—Who are we ? What do we love ?—the gift we bring will be easy, because our gift naturally emerges from who we are. The offering we bring is ourselves, just as we are. Our gift is our true nature. There can be no greater gift than this.

What we love and what captures our curiosity draws us forward into some place of great destiny.

When we come close to those things that break us down, we touch those things that also break us open. And in that breaking open, we uncover our true nature.