Awakening does not mean a change in difficulty, it means a change in how those difficulties are met.

Form is emptiness", the Buddhists teach, but form is also form. I would never be able to approach the emptiness of form if I continued to deny myself the experience of it.

... everything had changed but nothing was altered.

When we stop distancing ourselves from the pain in the world, our own or others, we create the possibility of a new experience, one that often surprises because of how much joy, connection, or relief it yields. Destruction may continue, but humanity shines through.

The picture we present to ourselves of who we think we ought to be obscures who we really are.

To be free, to come to terms with our lives, we have to have a direct experience of ourselves as we really are, warts and all.

[The Buddha] is not dividing himself into worthy and unworthy pieces; he is one being, indivisible, immune from the tendency to double back and beat up on himself. He has seen the worst in himself and not been taken down.

In building a path through the self to the far shore of awareness, we have to carefully pick our way through our own wilderness. If we can put our minds into a place of surrender, we will have an easier time feeling the contours of the land. We do not have to break our way through as much as we have to find our way around the major obstacles. We do not have to cure every neurosis, we just have to learn how not to be caught by them.