Meditation is the only intentional, systematic human activity which at bottom is about not trying to improve yourself or get anywhere else, but simply to realize where you already are.
Voluntary simplicity means going fewer places in one day rather than more, seeing less so I can see more, doing less so I can do more, acquiring less so I can have more.
We must be willing to encounter darkness and despair when they come up and face them, over and over again if need be, without running away or numbing ourselves in the thousands of ways we conjure up to avoid the unavoidable.
If you look at people out on the street, if you look at people at restaurants, nobody’s having conversations anymore. They’re sitting at dinner looking at their phone, because their brain is so addicted to it.
The only time that any of us have to grow or change or feel or learn anything is in the present moment. But we’re continually missing our present moments, almost willfully, by not paying attention.
Healing is a coming to terms with things as they are, rather than struggling to force them to be as they once were, or as we would like them to be, to feel secure or to have what we sometimes think of as our own way.
