If a man knew how to live he would never die.
The bad news is you're falling through the air, nothing to hang on to, no parachute. The good news is, there's no ground.
We must be willing to be completely ordinary people, which means accepting ourselves as we are without trying to become greater, purer, more spiritual, more insightful. If we can accept our imperfections as they are, quite ordinarily, then we can use them as part of the path. But if we try to get rid of our imperfections, then they will be enemies, obstacles on the road to our ‘self-improvement’.
To be a spiritual warrior, one must have a broken heart; without a broken heart and the sense of tenderness and vulnerability, your warriorship is untrustworthy.
Real fearlessness is the product of tenderness. It comes from letting the world tickle your heart, your raw and beautiful heart. You are willing to open up, without resistance or shyness, and face the world. You are willing to share your heart with others.
My advice to you is not to undertake the spiritual path. It is too difficult, too long, and is too demanding. I suggest you ask for your money back, and go home. This is not a picnic. It is really going to ask everything of you. So, it is best not to begin. However, if you do begin, it is best to finish.
Although the warrior's life is dedicated to helping others, he realizes that he will never be able to completely share his experience with others. . . Yet he is more and more in love with the world. That combination of love affair and loneliness is what enables the warrior to constantly reach out to help others. By renouncing his private world, the warrior discovers a greater universe and a fuller and fuller broken heart. This is not something to feel bad about; it is a cause for rejoicing.
Underneath the visible problems with reading and writing lies the deeper problem of 'illearnacy': an acquired disabling of learning courage and learning initiative.
There is a fundamental situation in which the country has reached rock bottom, that a mother can't send her children out of the house in the morning. The country has reached rock bottom and this needs to be changed.
Do not take yourself too seriously. You have to learn not to be dismayed at making mistakes. No human being can avoid failures.
Food cannot take care of spiritual, psychological and emotional problems, but the feeling of being loved and cared for, the actual comfort of the beauty and flavour of food, the increase of blood sugar and physical well-being, help one to go on during the next hours better equipped to meet the problems (p. 124).