Karen Maezen Miller

“Freedom is instantaneous the moment we accept things as they are.”

“Happiness is simple. Everything we do to find it is complicated.”

“Every life is a love story, but few of us know what love is until the story is nearly over.”

“Every bit of life comes with instructions, when we are attentive enough to notice.”

“May you be tired and afraidoverwhelmed and ready to quit.Quit!Start over, overten thousand times overroll out, get up, fall downbreak into tearsopen in laughtersing and dancebe silly, be glad.May you forget most things,remember everything,come to know in your boneswith your bloodthrough your eyesfrom your lipsout of earthdeep below, well beyondyou are love.You are just love.Amen.”

“Your life is your practice. Your spiritual practice does not occur someplace other than in your life right now, and your life is nowhere other than where you are. You are looking for answers, insight, and wisdom that you already possess. Live the life in front of you, be the life you are, and see what you find out for yourself.”

“The life of a mother is the life of a child: you are two blossoms on a single branch.”

“All practice is the practice of making a turn in a different direction. Toward one thing and away from another; the particulars in any given situation don't matter, because you always know the right way. A different way. With practice, you get better at turning.This is my practice. It's not anything special you need to learn. It is not some new information you neet to get. It is nothing you haven't heard before. It is just a turn you might not yet have made, or made again, and again, and again. A turn toward intimate engagement with the life you already have.Fulfillment derives not from lofty achievements, but from ordinary feats. It arrives not once in a lifetime, but every moment of the livelong day.”

“...Quite the narration in your head, even for a moment, and see for yourself that life is life, and not one minute of it is a retelling or a foretelling. Some things happen; some things don't. That's what makes it all worth seeing, no matter where it goes or how it ends. There is no spinmeister steering it all to a forgone conclusion.”

“You don't have to wait for happiness, because there's no time but now to be happy. You don't have to go somewhere else, because there's no place but here to find it. You don't have to do something else, because there's nothing more to it. You don't have to get something else, because everything you already have is enough. You just have to be happy. ...”