When you look at a flower in springtime, standing there with its beautiful petals and leaves, can you understand that flower is not the life alone that you see coming out of the ground? That flower belongs to a much greater life than the individual expression that you behold and say, "Isn't that beautiful?" You could never experience the radiance of the flower or utter those words if it were not for the fact that the life of that creation itself belongs to a body, a universe of life from out of which that one flower comes.

But we don't see the bigger life behind the little one. We only see the little life... which incidentally is why people fear death, because they only see the little life. They know nothing of the bigger life from out of which the little life has come.

What we think of as being "I" -- what we call our sense of self, our feeling of "I" -- belongs to a little, little, little world. And because all we know is what that little "I" in us presents itself as being, we don't have a conscious relationship with the broader life to which we belong, which ultimately is the gift of this existence. Instead, we belong to anyone and everything that provides us with a sense of identity.

Our identity is a process of constant comparison of one thought bringing up another thought, then reflecting upon what it brings up, producing stimulation. A "for" or "against" then appears, and now we know what to do about what has stimulated us to feel alive. But we are not alive when our thoughts are telling us who we are based on all the "I's" -- the parts of us that incessantly talk about our past, our problems, our fears, our worries.

The whole purpose of spiritual teachings is the gradual movement from being identified with one little "I" after another into the realization that all these little "I's" are doing is borrowing your life, your true sense of "I." Do you want to loan out your life until the time comes when your life itself is called for, and then find out you have nothing?

Find out for yourself. When you're suffering -- when you're angry or fearful -- if you could just see that the pain in you persists as it does because something in you insists what it does. Then you would know what to stop loaning yourself to.

Agree to enter into this bigger life that is more and more conscious of the little one that you have called your own. Begin to notice all these little "I's." Because the more you can see them, the less authority they'll have over you. And you'll know what it means to be a human being whose natural nature is to be in command of their own life because their natural nature belongs to the grand nature, to the Divine that is giving them their life instead of stealing it for the sensation of being alive.

Catch the little "I's." When you do, take a deep breath, and bring yourself into the Presence moment. Be fully with yourself -- with what you are, not with what you want, but with what is. When you're in relationship with Life itself, then what is true in you -- the gifts that you are given at birth, the individual expression of your life -- is seeded with every possibility that you need in order to enter into the broader life.