The love of someone else is more accessible or more possible if one lives with a sense of loving embrace towards oneself because that extends out into the world.
I woke up early one morning a couple of years ago and felt the tenderness of my being alone, the bitter sweetness of it. It has many colors, being alone. I walked out into my living room and I can say honestly that everything was pouring with life - the red sofa, the chairs with their patterns of roses, even the coffee table with its scattering of books. Everything was alive with the presence of being. Seeing the world though those eyes, I realized that I could never really be alone.
Struggle has a natural place in our life, but the fight or flight syndrome is often false struggle. There are times for that but we can have that reaction in areas of our life where it's not successful. Areas that concern existential issues or qualities of life - like meaning or purpose or love. These things actually come to us more as we let go of struggling to achieve them.
This question of love begins and ends with the willingness to be welcoming to one's own experience as a loving action towards oneself. It may be dark, it may be light, it may be joyous, it may be sorrowful, but it's your experience, and therefore, your life. As we have that kind of loving response towards our own life, then life itself in terms of the outside world, begins to feel different.
I belong on this earth in the way that an oak tree does.
We can acquire as much knowledge as we would like with a few taps on our keyboard. That's extremely valuable, but wisdom comes again from some different dimension.
Be willing to be where you actually are. In my experience, that is the most inherently meaningful experience you can have.
The great French Impressionist painter Renoir, right at the end of his very long life, said to a friend, "I am just now learning to paint. " Renoir carried his gift with a humility which realized how much he still had to learn. Anyone who goes deeply into a field in life and realizes this, gains a sense of proportion that can only make you humble.
Each of us is already special in the sense that nobody has the unique pattern of potentialities that anyone else has.
When the heart opens, we forget ourselves and the world pours in: this world, and also the invisible world of meaning that sustains everything that was and ever shall be.
The natural wish and impetus to feel oneself to be an individual, to be special, includes standing out more than anyone else.
When the heart opens, we forget ourselves and the world pours in.
When we turn our gaze to the inside, it becomes difficult to locate this familiar sense of self. To overcome that fear we need to feel special in some way.
There is a stillness in all of us that is really the essence of who we are. A stillness and a silence that doesn't move, that doesn't go anywhere and our task is to experience that while being in time.
We have to be on time every day for one thing or another, so how can we be on time and yet not in time at the same time?
We live in an age of knowledge, with the great god Google, that we can refer to at any time on any subject.
Some of us have the good fortune of some type of natural gift, whether it's playing tennis or painting or writing.
When you die, God and the Angels will hold you accountable for all the pleasures you were allowed in life that you denied yourself.
I had a classic case of what people call "seeker's disease. " That was part of my journey, but now, meaning is like a secret that's revealing itself moment by moment, day by day.
When we are open to ourselves and our own experience, and therefore, open to the world, then the world can respond.