Reality is not problematic. Problems exist only in the human mind. We might add: problems exist only in the not-yet-awakened human mind. But reality is not problematic. Take away human beings from this planet and nature would go on in all its loveliness and violence. Where would the problem be? No problem.

You’ve got to make sure of your “being” before you swing into action. You have to make sure of who you are before you act. Unfortunately, when people who are not awake swing into action, they simply substitute one cruelty for another, one injustice for another. And so it goes. Meister Eckhart says, “It is not by your actions that you will be saved” (or awakened) "but by your being.

Think of anything that's causing you pain, worry or anxiety. First, can you see the desire under that suffering? Make no mistake, there’s something you desire keenly or else you wouldn’t be suffering. What is that desire? Second, it isn’t simply a desire; there’s an identification made. You have said to yourself, “The very well-being of my existence is tied to fulfilling this desire.” Open to it and it will reveal how all suffering is caused by identifying with something within or outside you.

Anytime you have a negative feeling toward anyone, you’re living in an illusion.

A good is never so good as when you have no awareness that you’re doing good. You are never so good as when you have no consciousness that you’re good. Or as the great Sufi would say, “A saint is one until he or she knows it.” Unselfconscious! 

Are you listening, as most people do, in order to confirm what you already think?  Or are you listening with an attitude of openness?  Are you listening to learn something new? That's what's important!

We’ve been taught to look for our happiness in outside things: money, power, romance, approval. That’s the first thing we need to understand if we want to come awake, which is the same thing as saying: if we want to love, if we want freedom, if we want joy and peace and spirituality. In that sense, spirituality is the most practical thing in the whole wide world. I challenge anyone to think of anything more practical than spirituality as I have defined it—not piety, not devotion, not religion, not worship, but spirituality—waking up, waking up!

Tony De Mello on where self-worth comes from? He asks: Do you get it from success in your work? Do you get it from having a lot of money? Do you get it from attracting a lot of men if you’re a woman or a lot of women if you’re a man?  How fragile all that is, how transitory.

Happiness is your natural state. It is coming home to yourself simply by observing yourself.  Does that sound a bit tedious? It's not.  Self-observation is such a delightful and extraordinary thing. After a while you don’t have to make any effort, because, as illusions begin to crumble, you begin to know things that cannot be described. It’s called happiness, which is the experience of your essential nature. Everything changes and you become oriented to awareness instead of to suffering.

Sooner or later there arises in every human heart the desire for holiness, spirituality, God, call it what you will. One hears mystics speak of a divinity all around them that is within our grasp, that would make our lives meaningful and beautiful and rich, if we could only discover it.