The other day while meditating, I realized more deeply than ever how the unhealed ego tries to reduce the world to something small rather than include all of it. In other words, finding a safe, dry spot in the flood of life, the ego immediately starts planning how to ignore the waters all around, and concentrate on what it considers safe "No thoughts but these! No truth but this! This is enlightenment, and this is not!"

Awakening to the truth however, is to turn our lives the other way around, to look at the world and include everything: our best parts and our worst parts, our successes and our failures, our joys and our suffering. When we include everything, there is nothing to hide from, and it is only then that the true power of all things in life begin to reveal themselves. The world and ourselves come alive at that moment, and it is then we come closest to holding ourselves as God holds us. All the things of life, held in this way, become a chariot that can take us to the realization of our own true, small and magnificent nature.