To think deeply of simple things.
People had been writing to me and saying, "Can you write something for children?" I felt I couldn't quite do it myself because I never had children.
The most common ego identifications have to do with possessions, the work you do, social status and recognition, knowledge and education, physical appearance, special abilities, relationships, person and family history, belief systems, and often nationalistic, racial, religious, and other collective identifications. None of these is you.
Here is a new spiritual practice for you: don't take your thoughts too seriously.
The primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation but your thoughts about it.
All negativity is caused by an accumulation of psychological time and denial of the present. Unease, anxiety, tension, stress, worry - all forms of fear - are caused by too much future, and not enough presence. Guilt, regret, resentment, grievances, sadness, bitterness, and all forms of nonforgiveness are caused by too much past, and not enough presence.
Stop looking outside for scraps of pleasure or fulfillment, for validation, security, or love - you have a treasure within that is infinitely greater than anything the world can offer.
Euthanasia and assisted suicide are never acceptable acts of mercy. They always gravely exploit the suffering and desperate, extinguishing life in the name of the 'quality of life' itself.
If you had found the right candidate in 2000 or 2004, and you could have put that man or woman, given them ballot access in September of the election year, they could have won the election.
The alternative to fanaticism and to death is not some miraculous realization that someone has been wrong and he has to apologize. No, the answer to fanaticism and to death is curiosity and compromise and concession.
Anyone can revolt. It is more difficult silently to obey our own inner promptings, and to spend our lives finding sincere and fitting means of expression for our temperament and our gifts.