“When we see others beginning to live their authentic selves, it drives us crazy if we have not lived out our own.”

A child has no trouble believing the unbelievable, nor does the genius or the madman. It’s only you and I, with our big brains and our tiny hearts, who doubt and overthink and hesitate.

The professional will not tolerate disorder… He wants the carpet vacuumed and the threshold swept, so the Muse may enter and not soil her gown.

Courage is inseparable from love and leads to what may arguably be the noblest of all warrior virtues: selflessness.

We will have to choose between the life we want for our future and the life we have left behind.

Do you love your idea? Does it feel right on instinct? Are you willing to bleed for it?

It is one thing to study war and another to live the warrior’s life.

It’s one thing to lie to ourselves. It’s another thing to believe it.

Resistance will tell you anything to keep you from doing your work.

Creative work is not a selfish act or a bid for attention on the part of the actor. It’s a gift to the world and every being in it. Don’t cheat us of your contribution. Give us what you’ve got.

Don’t prepare. Begin. Our enemy is not lack of preparation. The enemy is resistance, our chattering brain producing excuses. Start before you are ready.

We feed it [Resistance] with power by our fear of it. Master that fear and we conquer Resistance.

To yield to Resistance deforms our spirit. It stunts us and makes us less than we are and were born to be.

Long-term, we must begin to build our internal strengths. It isn’t just skills like computer technology. It’s the old-fashioned basics of self-reliance, self-motivation, self-reinforcement, self-discipline, self-command.

Research can become Resistance. We want to work, not prepare to work.

We fear discovering that we are more than we think we are… That we actually have the guts, the perserverance, the capacity… because, if it’s true, then we become estranged from all we know.

Never forget: This very moment, we can change our lives. There never was a moment, and never will be, when we are without the power to alter our destiny.

You still won’t be perfect, but success isn’t about perfection-it is about authenticity. You are a success if you are being your real, authentic self.

It’s easier to be authentic if you don’t say you are authentic.

Every authentic poem contributes to the labor of poetry… to bring together what life has separated or violence has torn apart…

The major adventure is to claim your authentic, true being, which is not culturally given to you. The culture will not explain to you how to be a real human being. It will tell you how to be banker, politician, Indian chief, masseuses, actress, whatever, but it will not give you true being.

You can feel when something’s authentic, and you can feel when it’s not: you know when someone’s trying to make the club record, or trying to make the girl record, or trying to make the thug record. It’s none of that. It’s just my emotions.

Every authentic poem contributes to the labour of poetry… to bring together what life has separated or violence has torn apart.

Shamanism has always known this, and shamanism has always, in its most authentic expressions, taught that the path required allies.

In Tibetan, authentic presence is wangthang, which literally means, ‘field of power’… The cause or the virtue that brings about authentic presence is emptying out and letting go. You have to be without clinging.