CLEAR ALL
Stay a verb—don’t become a noun.
4
Life’s work is to wake up, to let the things that enter into the circle wake you up rather than put you to sleep. The only way to do this is to open, be curious, and develop some sense of sympathy for everything that comes along, to get to know its nature and let it teach you what it will.
3
Safety is not the absence of threat, it is the presence of connection.
1
The miracle is that your children will love you with all your imperfections if you can do the same for them.
Excessive use of external motivation can slow and even stop your journey to mastery.
Learning any new skill involves relatively brief spurts of progress, each of which is followed by a slight decline to a plateau somewhat higher in most cases than that which preceded it . . . the upward spurts vary; the plateaus have their own dips and rises along the way. . . .
What we call ‘mastery’ can be defined as that mysterious process through which what is at first difficult or even impossible becomes easy and pleasurable through diligent, patient, long-term practice.
Indecision leads to inaction, which leads to low energy, depression, despair.
2
Ultimately, nothing in this life is ‘commonplace,’ nothing is ‘in between.’ The threads that join your every act, your every thought, are infinite. All paths of mastery eventually merge. [Each person has a] vantage point that offers a truth of its own.
Avoidance will make you feel less vulnerable in the short run, but it will never make you less afraid.