Wakefulness is not a destination but a song the human heart keeps singing, the way birds keep singing at the first sign of light.
No bird can fly without opening its wings, and no one can love without exposing their hearts.
Repetition is not failure. Ask the waves, ask the leaves, ask the wind.
The extraordinary is waiting quietly beneath the skin of all that is ordinary.
To walk quietly until the miracle in everything speaks is poetry, whether we write it down or not.
What we reach for may be different, but what makes us reach is the same.
No amount of thinking can stop thinking.
The fully engaged heart is the antibody for the infection of violence.
The things that can restore us have to get in, too. This is what the wisdom of an open heart is all about. All the spiritual traditions speak of this but I love the Tibetan tradition: “A spiritual warrior always has a crack in his heart because that is how the mysteries can get in.”
We work so hard to get somewhere, to realize a dream, to arrive at some destination, that we often forget that though some satisfaction may be waiting at the end of our endurance and effort, there is great and irreplaceable aliveness in the steps along the way.
I didn’t know the language of my own wisdom. I wanted to be loved and after all the various relationships I went through, I finally realized I am love. I carry love.
We tend to make the thing in the way the way.
Mysteriously, as elusive as it is, this moment – where the eye is what it sees, where the heart is what it feels – this moment shows us that what is real is sacred.
Anything or anyone that asks you to be other than yourself is not holy, but is trying only to fill its own need.
To listen also means to stay in relationship, the central challenge of our time, and this requires us to constantly minimize whatever stands between us and life.
When we keep choosing between right and wrong. We spend our energy sorting life rather than living it.
To be broken is no reason to see all things as broken.
As nature erodes the earth into magnificent forms, life through endless experience opens us further and further to the essence of what matters. Each time I’ve been opened further, the way I experience life and receive things has changed.
Birds learn how to fly, never knowing where flight will take them.
Joy in what we do is not an added feature; it is a sign of deep health.