Mystical experience lies in our actual living situation. It’s a question of relating with the body, the physical situation. If you put your hand on a hot burner on the stove, you get burned. That’s a very direct message that you’re being absentminded. If you lost your temper and slam the door after a quarrel, you may catch your finger in the door. You get a very direct message — you hurt your finger. In that situation, you are in direct contact with things, with the energies that are alive in the situation.

From “The Myth of Happiness,” in Work, Sex, Money: Real Life on the Path of Mindfulness, page 32.