Love is wonderful-except when we are searching for it, trying to hold on to it, or missing it.

Your most intimate relationship is the one you have with your thoughts. The way you relate to your thoughts determines everything else in your life, and in particular how you relate to other people.

The most universally held beliefs about that you need to be liked, loved, or appreciated are untrue, and that they lead to a false and stressful life.

There's nothing left now between you and love except what you haven't resolved inside yourself.

When you do question your thoughts, you find out that the world is a much kinder place than you had imagined, and there's no need to go to sleep in fear or wake up anxious. When you really start to look, the world is full of love, and there's plenty to go around." John Tarrant (Zen teacher)

Seeking love and approval is a sure way to lose awareness of both.

Most people are so busy making improvements (to their lives) they don't notice they've stepped out of heaven.

There's no reason to believe that thoughts match reality.

Anxiously focusing on the other person, checking for approval or disapproval, leaves nobody at home in yourself, nobody noticing your thoughts or taking responsibility for your feelings. This cuts you off from the source of real contentment.

When you say or do anything to please, get, keep, influence, or control anyone or anything, fear is the cause and pain is the result. Manipulation is separation, and separation is painful. Another person can love you totally in that moment, and you'd have no way of realizing it. If you act from fear, there's no way you can receive love, because you're trapped in a thought about what you have to do for love. Every stressful thought separates you from people.

My experience is that I need no one to complete me. As soon as I realize that, everyone completes me.

We don't know that we can simply love, and that we can simply ask for what we want, with no strings attached.

When you no longer put your energy into seeking approval, you can open your arms to criticism and see it as a gift.

Without the stressful thoughts that separate us from one another, there is only one mind, and it's everywhere.

This is about your own empowerment, your ability to see things as they really are, through the eyes of love.

Yes, every single human being is trying his best. We're all doing the best we can. But when we believe what we think, we have to live out those thoughts. When there's chaos in our heads, there's chaos in our lives. When there's hurt in our thinking, there's hurt in our lives. If I hate someone, I'm mistaking them for me, and solutions remain hidden.

The word need suggest[s] a permanent state of mind. But if you look at your experiences clearly, you'll see that there aren't any permanent states of mind.

Once a painful concept is met with understanding, the next time it appears you may find it interesting. What used to be the nightmare is now just interesting. The next time it appears, you may find it funny. The next time you may not even notice it. This is the power of loving what is.

"Oh shit!" marks the point where reality and your plan parted ways. Things don't seem to be going your way, and to the best of your ability you're going to fight reality, even if all you can do is swear, kick a rock, or give someone you love a hard time. The more you stick to the belief that you're in control, the more of these moments there are in your life.

Questioning the thought that arises when you hit a bump in your life can radically change the quality of your whole existence.

"What I need is what I have." This is not something to believe, it's the way things are right now, whether you believe it or not.

Noticing and counting the beautiful reasons unexpected things happen for ends the mystery. Counting the genuine ways that this unexpected event happened for me, rather than to me isn't a game. It's an exercise in observing the nature of life. It's a way of putting yourself back into reality, into the kindness of the nature of things.

One of the most loving acts you can do for yourself, and for everyone else, is to ask, "Right now, in this moment, whose business am I in"?

There is no more loving way to be with someone than to stay out of his or her business mentally.

This inquiry isn't manipulation. It's going inside yourself for the love of truth and finding your own answers. If you have any trouble loving yourself, your work isn't done.

The truth is no respecter of spiritual concepts. "I should love myself"-ugh, on what planet? Love is not a doing. There is nothing you have to do. And when you question your mind, you can see that the only thing that keeps you from being love is a stressful thought.

I am reality: this means that I am the perfect one to be me and no one else can be it. There are no mistakes in this perfect world (universe), which is a tapestry of pure delight and beauty when seen through the eyes of someone who isn't arguing with what is.

There are two ways of being me: One is to hate it or love it. Which will it be? Okay, I'll be me, and question my thoughts about me until I see me as perfect in every way, even sweeter than perfect. Someone has got to be happy in this world. Good that's me. I definitely volunteer.

"Should" is the story of a past or future, and it's hopeless to ague with what is.

If you say one single thing that I have the urge to defend, that thing is the very pearl waiting inside me to be discovered.

When you don't believe your stressful thoughts, all that's left are love and laughter.

Love is what you are already. Love doesn't seek anything. It's already complete. It doesn't want, doesn't need, has no shoulds. It already has everything it wants, it already is everything it wants, just the way it wants it.

Love wouldn't deny a breath. It wouldn't deny a grain of sand or a speck of dust. It is totally in love with itself, and it delights in acknowledging itself through its own presence, in every way, without limit. Love is so vast within itself that it will burn you up. It's so vast that there's nothing you can do with it. All you can do is be it.