The Muscles Used To Make A Smile

We Wait For Things To Be Different In Order To Feel Okay With Life. As Long As We Keep Attaching Our Happiness To The External Events Of Our Lives, Which Are Ever Changing, We’ll Always Be Left Waiting For It.

The Great Gift Of A Spiritual Path Is Coming To Trust That You Can Find A Way To True Refuge. You Realize That You Can Start Right Where You Are, In The Midst Of Your Life, And Find Peace In Any Circumstance. Even At Those Moments When The Ground Shakes Terribly Beneath You—when There’s A Loss That Will Alter Your Life Forever—you Can Still Trust That You Will Find Your Way Home. This Is Possible Because You’ve Touched The Timeless Love And Awareness That Are Intrinsic To Who You Are.

There Are Stories We Take On From Our Culture, And There Are Stories Based On Our Own Personal History. Some Of Those Stories Lock Us In Limiting Beliefs And Lead To Suffering, And There Are Others That Can Move Us Toward Freedom.

Compassion Can Be Described As Letting Ourselves Be Touched By The Vulnerability And Suffering That Is Within Ourselves And All Beings. The Full Flowering Of Compassion Also Includes Action: Not Only Do We Attune To The Presence Of Suffering, We Respond To It.

We Are Uncomfortable Because Everything In Our Life Keeps Changing -- Our Inner Moods, Our Bodies, Our Work, The People We Love, The World We Live In. We Can't Hold On To Anything -- A Beautiful Sunset, A Sweet Taste, An Intimate Moment With A Lover, Our Very Existence As The Body/mind We Call Self -- Because All Things Come And Go. Lacking Any Permanent Satisfaction, We Continuously Need Another Injection Of Fuel, Stimulation, Reassurance From Loved Ones, Medicine, Exercise, And Meditation. We Are Continually Driven To Become Something More, To Experience Something Else.