Excerpt: "The breath brings us home.

Yeah. It’s a fad. It’s white noise. It’s easy to dismiss and look for the next thing.

And it’s your most powerful tool for transforming your life and one you have direct contact with and control over if you want it.

Don’t think about it.

Try it."

Excerpt: "The hardest part of this practice for me is when I feel like I am making others’ lives harder (particularly my wife) by asking for help. It has take a long time to be okay with other people helping even when they have to sacrifice something to do so. I am really willing to do this on my end, but I don’t like “putting people out.” In fact, the feeling of seeing someone struggle to do the thing I was supposed to be doing has been enough to push my buttons of reactivity and then I re-engage to try to keep them from being uncomfortable.

Well, that’s a rough cycle to be part of and I am learning that sometimes our lives do inconvenience others and sometimes our conditions in life do make life harder for those we love.

To fight it is to really increase our own suffering and the suffering of those trying to help.

What I can do is honor the body and mind and to express gratitude for the sacrifices being made."

Excerpt: "And as I looked at them, I noticed that a breeze was blowing them back and forth and I felt its cool kiss against my skin, and then I noticed that beyond the tree leaves was a blue sky with white fluffy clouds just hovering overhead, and then I felt the warmth of the sun on my face, and then I felt a great and deep breath fill my lungs, and then I felt like I was just completely absorbed in the moment and that there was really no place and time I could be or rather be other than the one right there and then, walking alongside my son and our dog."

Excerpt: "But one of my intentions these days is “I am safe with myself.”

This means, among other things, that I step out of reactive cycles and accept and feel what is in my body, embracing what is present rather than exiting the moment to try to get somewhere or get away from somewhere."

Excerpt: "What pure joy to know this world with another in the heart of another as though there is no other."

Excerpt: "Of all the moments thus far today, it is the one that is the steeping tea leaves in the water of my conscious awareness. It is present even now. A wonderful mystery too marvelous to be understood as Mary Oliver says in her poem, “Mysteries, Yes.”

Excerpt: "The content at ground zero doesn’t really even matter that much, the backstories are quite insignificant, but we are all lying down in our beds tonight with the sense that we can show up to life together, that we can get through hard things, that we can extend grace and truth and forgiveness at the same time, that we can laugh while crying and cry while laughing, that we can feel all the heat of the moment and let it burn through our hearts and pass through, that we can acknowledge our mistakes and reconcile, that we can be better than we were yesterday, that we are safe with ourselves and each other, that we are loved and loving, that we are gentle and we are warriors, that we care enough to tell the truth as we see it, and that we are tender and wise and humble enough to receive the truth when we hear it."

Excerpt: "What if they don’t seek permanency where it can’t be found and instead live out of the joy that is often described as simply the joy of being? The joy that people often do not find until late in life when they realize they’re never going to “get there” or after an illness or great loss. The joy that they then realize was “here” all along and had nothing to do with their circumstances.

Much suffering and violence would simply end."

Excerpt: "This is the power of “perhaps.”

“Perhaps” allows and invites investigation, exploration, curiosity, inquisitiveness. It engages the inner eye. It opens the doors and windows to receive input, to do it in one’s own time, to withhold the need for an answer, to bypass judgment, to leave behind labels for awhile, to simply be with life in an intentional way, open to mystery, open to discovery, open to listen and receive.

Excerpt: "hat I often mistook as passivity, I now am beginning to see was a deeper wisdom that comes out of a heart and mind that do not rush to judgment, that recognize the effects of place/time/history on perspective, and take into account the limitations of any perspective at any given time."