Mihaela Bach's Key Ideas from The Book of Awakening
by Mark Nepo

“The pain of life is pure salt; no more, no less. The amount of pain in life remains the same, exactly the same. But the amount of bitterness we taste depends on the container we put the pain in. So when you are in pain, the only thing you can do is to enlarge your sense of things…. Stop being a glass. Become a lake.”

Center yourself and focus on a pain that is with you. Rather than trying to eliminate the pain, try to breathe through it. With each in-breath, notice your efforts to wrap around the pain. With each out-breath, try to enlarge your sense of Self, and let the pain float within the depth of all we’ll never know.