i love books that pop into your life and remind you to AWAKEN. it is very easy to get caught up in the comfort and ease of a cup of tea on a warm couch in a house where you can actually put your clothes on shelves. 
then you read a book like this and remember that it is outside in the biting wind next to the spray of the ocean with sand getting in your shoes and your cheeks turning red that you really FEEL alive. 
Dan Millman is one of those reminders. 

I read this book many years ago at a time in my life where I had very little hope, security, or even thought of how to achieve either. Typical advice would not have worked to show me a way out. I picked this book up on a whim thinking it might have something a bit different to say.  Was I surprised when I found more than just something a bit different?!

This book does not give answers. It only shows the questions and suggests a method of finding some answers. To those seeking a way of finding peace, this is the ultimate book to read. It will assist you in finding the path but it is then up to you to find the way. Mr. Millman has created what I consider the best “self-help” book around because it is truly helping oneself.

The silence speaks loudly in the now. Can you here it? Wisdom lives in the now. It is the by product of learning and creating.  The sun is always rising and falling somewhere and the somewhere is the place called, now.  Beauty follows it everywhere it goes, just as it follows us everywhere we go.  I saw  Dan in Detroit a few years ago and I must say that he walks his walk.  I can say that I very often have my head in the clouds but my two feet are firmly on the ground.  The book does change lives.  Thanks again Dan.

“Milarepa had searched everywhere for enlightenment, but could find no answer - until one day, he saw an old man walking slowly down a mountain path, carrying a heavy sack. Immediately, Milarepa sensed that this old man knew the secret he had been desperately seeking for many years.

“”Old man, please tell me what you know. What is enlightenment?'

“The old man smiled at hime for a moment, and swung the heavy burden off his shoulders, and stood straight.

“'Yes, I see!' cried Milarepa. 'My everlasting gratitude. But please, one question more. What is after enlightenment?'

“Smiling again, the old man picked up the sack once again, lung it over his shoulders, steadied his burden, and continued on his way.”

If you don't get what you want, you suffer; if you get what you don't want, you suffer; even when you get exactly what you want, you still suffer because you can't hold on to it forever. Your mind is your predicament. It wants to be free of change. Free of pain, free of the obligations of life and death. But change is a law, and no amount of pretending will alter that reality.