“We can let the circumstances of our lives harden us so that we become increasingly resentful and afraid, or we can let them soften us and make us kinder and more open to what scares us. We always have this choice.”

Treat yourself as your own beloved child.

There’s nothing more important on our spiritual path than developing gentleness to oneself.

In meditation, you learn how to get out of your own way long enough for there to be room for your wisdom to manifest.

By the way that we think and by the way that we believe in things, in that way our world is created.

Rejoicing in ordinary things is not sentimental or trite. It actually takes guts. Each time we drop our complaints and allow everyday good fortune to inspire us, we enter the warrior’s world.

Deep down in the human spirit, there is a reservoir of courage. It is always available, always waiting to be discovered.

In the end, that’s what we all need more than anything else: to be there for each other, in every kind of situation.

Appreciate everything, even the ordinary. Especially the ordinary.

Let your curiosity be greater than your fear.

You are the sky. Everything else – it’s just the weather.

Feeling irritated, restless, afraid, and hopeless is a reminder to listen more carefully.

Feel the feelings and drop the story.

The best spiritual instruction is when you wake up in the morning and say, ‘I wonder what’s going to happen today.’ And then carry that kind of curiosity through your life.

Usually we think that brave people have no fear. The truth is that they are intimate with fear.

All situations teach you, and often it’s the tough ones that teach you best.

To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest. To live fully is to be always in no-man’s-land, to experience each moment as completely new and fresh. To live is to be willing to die over and over again.