The things that we think we want are often substitutes for what we really want, and the pleasures we seek are less than the joy that they distract us… - Charles Eisenstein

In religion, [we find] the pursuit of an ultimate aim, such as salvation or enlightenment, from which all other good things flow. How like the unlimited aim of money! I wonder what the effect would be on our spirituality if we gave up on the pursuit of a unitary abstract goal that we believe to be the key to everything else. How would it feel to release the endless campaign to improve ourselves, to make progress toward a goal? What would it be like just to play instead, just to be? Like wealth, enlightenment is a goal that knows no limit, and in both cases the pursuit of it can enslave. In both cases, I think the object of the pursuit is a spurious substitute for a diversity of things that people really want.

Not blaming ourselves for mistakes is the flip side of not taking credit for our acts of courage or creativity or leadership, or our good ideas.

Miracles are not the intercession of an external, divine agency in violoation of the laws of nature. A miracles is something impossible from an old understanding of reality, and possible from a new one.