Top Highlights

• Fully occupied by the process of achieving innumerable goals, we lose the ability to determine which goals really matter, and why.
• If your body is tired, seek out some fluidly moving part of nature: a fireplace, a river, a field of wind-blown wheat, a thundering surf. Watching and listening to the patterned disorder of the universe is one of the deep soul's favorite pastimes. The important thing is that whatever physical action you choose requires no deliberate thought; you ca...
• still churns out thoughts like a malfunctioning Twinkie extruder. If you're one of those enlightened people who can simply stop thinking for fifteen minutes a day, go for it. If you have a squirrel brain like mine, however, an easier option—in fact, your only option—is to simply watch your mind do its thing, without passing any judgments on your th...
• The child is after the toy, but the mother watches the child not the toy.
• But the more nothing you do, the more you will see that there has always been, and always will be, a part of you that accomplishes more with stillness than you could with frenzied action. As the poet Antonio Machado puts it, My soul is not asleep! My soul is not asleep! It neither sleeps nor dreams, but watches, its clear eyes open, far off things,...