When it happened, I was aware that my intention and my desire to grow, to evolve, to become awakened, had drawn me to the book but it was my teacher at the time who would introduce me to it. It took me two years to read it the first time. While traveling, I lost my first copy that had extensive notes and I was devastated.

At heart, there are very few beings who are not enamored of struggle. There are very few who would consent to having no darkness or who can conceive of light as anything other than the opposite of obscurity.

Developing and training your mind to transcend this divide can require a lot of patience and strength; it requires a lot of humility to see and admit your own stupidity and mental limitations.

The object of your life in the tossing and turning of the daily grind IS reaching the realization that you ARE the joy, not that you just have joy but that you ARE the joy. You ARE the thing from which you have come…and always will be, no matter how you destroy yourself, no matter how you cloak your mind with ignorance and judgment and belief. So, try it on for size, right now, whether you’re driving your car, flying to another city, cleaning the house, exercising.

You’re not working on the world, you’re working on you. You start with you and you’re going to end with you because that’s where the work is until you can get to a point to be able to say with great satisfaction, “This is who I am.” Many of the great ones have gone to their deaths proclaiming, “This is who I am.”

Maybe you’re like me. Sometimes when I look back, I don’t even recognize that person, myself, so it’s easy for me to look back and shake my head. I don’t know who he was but he apparently didn’t know what he was doing.