Gary Zukav

Compassion is loving others enough to say or do what is appropriate from an empowered heart without attachment to the outcome.

The first step is to distinguish the loving parts of your personality that are active from the frightened parts of your personality that are active - in other words, to learn to distinguish love from fear in you. The second step is to choose love, no matter what.

Caregivers attract caregivers and live in a community of love. They are energized by their caring, fulfilled, and they love life. Caretakers attract caretakers and live in the company of resentful victims who see themselves as misused and are fatigued from constant giving with no return.

The next time you feel unworthy, inadequate or inferior, remember that these experiences have nothing to do with humbleness, any more than lowering yourself to connect with another individual has to do with humbleness. There are no lower or higher individuals in the perception of a humble person. There are only souls. There is only love.

Only choices made in love are compassionate. There are no exceptions. Do you have the courage to act with an empowered heart without attachment to the outcome? If not, you have no ability to give or experience compassion. That is the shocking truth.

Unworthiness is the inmost frightening thought that you do not belong, no matter how much you want to belong, that you are an outsider and will always be an outsider. It is the idea that you are flawed and cannot be fixed. It is wanting to be loved and feeling unlovable, or wanting to love and feeling that you are not capable of loving.

The hardest times to choose love are the very times when you can most grow spiritually. In fact, they are the only times you can grow spiritually!

Love grounds you. It orients you. Love brings your awareness to others and yourself. Love opens your mind and heart to others and yourself. Love settles you and gives you balance.

The choice that frees or imprisons us is the choice of love or fear. Love liberates. Fear imprisons.

The characteristics of an authentically empowered personality are humbleness, clarity, forgiveness and love.

The essence of a person is not the clothing she wears or the things he does. People who love them do not stop loving them when they change clothing or do other things. Your essence is not even your history, culture, race, or what you think and do. It is your soul.

When someone fears losing your affection, he or she will strive to keep it. Perhaps you have strived to keep someone's affection, too. Fear of loss is not love.