The seed of greatness is sown in an instant, but in this world of ours everything great takes time to grow. This means that patience, mingled with persistence, is the special nutriment that sustains all things great. Therefore, should we wish to win the great life, we need only add equal measures of quiet watchfulness to our spiritual willingness and a great goodness cannot help but flourish within us...

Compassion for others starts with the understanding that every human being on the planet looks different from us -- because physically we are different -- but inwardly we all live in the same pool. We all have pain and pleasure, we all share emotions that move in waves through that pool. People may live on the east bank of the pool so that the waves they know are different from the waves we know on the west bank, but if we look close enough...

It's well known that storm-tossed waves often expose new treasures along the shoreline; there is unexpected wealth to be collected by those who know the secret value of rough seas. And yet, even though most of us have little tolerance for anything that "rocks our boat," the truth of the matter is self-evident...

Any time we find ourselves sinking into some dark mood, getting more and more disturbed over some past unwanted moment, the first thing we need to see is the truth of the following: The reason we can't drop what's dragging us down is because we're connected -- in that same moment -- to a lower level of consciousness that likes to show us and give us good reasons to feel bad...

What if you actually understood there is no death? Think for a moment what your life would be like. And I'm not just talking about the incessant human fear of their mortality. I'm talking about those moments in which it feels like you're dying because something has happened to you that you don't like, and how you struggle to keep alive the very thing caught in that crisis -- that nature struggling, suffering instead of understanding that the moment has come...

Whenever we find ourselves in some "unwanted" part of ourselves, perhaps reliving an old heartache or caught in the throes of some irrepressible anger, old fear, or unyielding worry, part of this unwanted moment includes our certainty that we're trapped in this condition. And compounding our confusion over feeling ourselves captive in this way are all of the attending negative inner voices.

On this one point all saints, sages, and illumined beings agree: there is nothing as certain as silence, stillness, and solitude to introduce you to the divinity within. The first step in learning to be still isn’t really an action at all, meaning that it’s nothing like we might ordinarily think of doing when we want our world to stop spinning like a top.

We can never hope to be free as long as any part of us struggles with, or suffers over what others are doing, have done, or won't do with their lives. Besides, if we could remain aware of the often-compromised state of our own character, that is, how we still do those things to others that we don't want to do, this awakened conscience would stir in us a new need. Rather than worrying about whether so-and-so gets his comeuppance for being the...

Real life is not by the numbers; it is impossible to "know" and grow at the same time. Yes, one can have a formula for a prescription drug, or a recipe for a good green salad; but there is no system of thought that can stand up to the ever-shifting changes of real life, let alone meet those same changes fearlessly. The self that knows itself through thought can never develop beyond the content of itself, any more than a math equation can suddenly outgrow...

What could be more natural than letting go? Think about it. If half of our life is spent meeting moments that are natural endings, then what are we to do with these things in our lives that can no longer serve us in a meaningful way? The answer? We must let them go! To do anything else would be unnatural, even unhealthy for us.

We struggle as best we can to free ourselves from dark unwanted states but invariably find ourselves short of the mark. Slowly but surely, one thing becomes clear: we start to see that calling upon who and what we have been to save us from our suffering is like asking a windstorm to neatly pile our autumn leaves.

If you've ever been in a condition where you've found yourself in a rut -- maybe you can't stop thinking about something, maybe there's a problem that you wish you could just get past but the conditions of your life won't allow you to do it, or maybe you want to make a real change but you look at your life and say, "It's impossible, the situation I'm in" -- in such moments, apart from natural responsibility (should you have that) to those who are dependent...