In mindfulness one is not only restful and happy, but alert and awake. Meditation is not evasion; it is a serene encounter with reality.
Mindfulness helps you go home to the present. And every time you go there and recognize a condition of happiness that you have, happiness comes.
Go back and take care of yourself. Your body needs you, your feelings need you, your perceptions need you. Your suffering needs you to acknowledge it. Go home and be there for all these things.
If we practice mindfulness, we always have a place to be when we are afraid.
Learn to relax. Your body is precious, as it houses your mind and spirit. Inner peace begins with a relaxed body.
In examining disease, we gain wisdom about anatomy and physiology and biology. In examining the person with disease, we gain wisdom about life.
There is only one cardinal rule: One must always listen to the patient.
Forgiveness is giving up the hope that the past could have been any different, it’s accepting the past for what it was, and using this moment and this time to help yourself move forward.
Feel the feelings and drop the story.
The most fundamental aggression to ourselves, the most fundamental harm we can do to ourselves, is to remain ignorant by not having the courage and the respect to look at ourselves honestly and gently.
To cultivate equanimity we practice catching ourselves when we feel attraction or aversion, before it hardens into grasping or negativity.
Having compassion starts and ends with having compassion for all those unwanted parts of ourselves. The healing comes from letting there be room for all of this to happen: room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy.
If you meditate regularly, even when you don’t feel like it, you will make great gains, for it will allow you to see how your thoughts impose limits on you. Your resistances to meditation are your mental prisons in miniature.
Life is a balance of holding on and letting go.
Be patient with yourself. Self-growth is tender; it’s holy ground. There’s no greater investment.
I’m most afraid of losing my mind. You lose your identity, your sense of who you are, where you are.
My philosophy is to “kill the monster while it’s little.” The best time to handle a “negative” emotion is when you first begin to feel it. It’s much more difficult to interrupt an emotional pattern once it’s full-blown.
The quest for meaning is the key to mental health and human flourishing.
The meaning of my life is to help others find meaning in theirs.
Man’s search for meaning is the chief motivation of his life.