“As we willingly enter each place of fear, each place of deficiency and insecurity in ourselves, we will discover that its walls are made of untruths, of old images of ourselves, of ancient fears, of false ideas of what is pure and what is not.”

At the end of our life our questions are simple: Did I live fully? Did I love well?

To live life is to make a succession of errors. Understanding this can bring us great ease and forgiveness for ourselves and others.

Most of us have spent our lives caught up in plans, expectations, ambitions for the future; in regrets, guilt or shame about the past. To come into the present is to stop the war.

Wisdom says we are nothing. Love says we are everything. Between these two our life flows.

No amount of meditation, yoga, diet, and reflection will make all of our problems go away, but we can transform our difficulties into our practice until little by little they guide us on our way.

Everything that has a beginning has an ending. Make your peace with that and all will be well.

Since death will take us anyway, why live our life in fear? Why not die in our old ways and be free to live?

We each need to make our lion’s roar – to persevere with unshakable courage when faced with all manner of doubts and sorrows and fears – to declare our right to awaken.

Use whatever has come to awaken patience, understanding, and love.

The waves do keep coming, so learn to surf.

Ours is a society of denial that conditions us to protect ourselves from any direct difficulty and discomfort. We expend enormous energy denying our insecurity, fighting pain, death and loss and hiding from the basic truths of the natural world and of our own nature.

Let go of the battle. Breathe quietly and let it be. Let your body relax and your heart soften. Open to whatever you experience without fighting.

Train your mind the same way you’d train a puppy: Be patient, be consistent, and have some fun along the way.

Attention to the human body brings healing and regeneration. Through awareness of the body we remember who we really are.

Peace requires us to surrender our illusions of control.

Even Socrates, who lived a very frugal and simple life, loved to go to the market. When his students asked about this, he replied, “I love to go and see all the things I am happy without.

I love trying things and discovering how I hate them.

What’s interesting about science is that we’re constantly discovering new things about the universe, about ourselves, about our bodies, about diseases, about the possibilities of the future. It’s amazing. Science is one of the coolest things about being a human being – without a doubt.

A desire to be observed, considered, esteemed, praised, beloved, and admired by his fellows is one of the earliest as well as the keenest dispositions discovered in the heart of man.

War exposes the best and worst of those who are called to fight. I know of no man who lacked character in peace and then discovered his character in combat.

It is easier to discover a deficiency in individuals, in states, and in Providence, than to see their real import and value.

Civilization is a hopeless race to discover remedies for the evils it produces.

To find out what one is fitted to do, and to secure an opportunity to do it, is the key to happiness.

As you take a few minutes each day to quiet your mind, you will discover a nice benefit: you’re everyday, ordinary life will begin to seem far more extraordinary.