Living your life with open-hearted awareness does not prevent life from breaking your heart. In an act of protection, you often build walls around your heart, not realizing that you will have to live imprisoned behind those walls. You have been hurt, yes, but that is not the sum of you. Developing a compassionate response to your own suffering, and the suffering of others, can teach you to use all of life as fuel. You burn away what you no longer need, using your pain to facilitate connection, growth and radical transformation.

These teachings align you with the principle of “love anyway,” placing the tools of open-hearted awareness firmly in your hands. You become the fire tender of your inner heart, the warrior of compassion, using every experience, every moment, to live broken open by authenticity.