Do you feel like you can't embrace anything these days? You go to the store and encounter a scowling face. You hear some bad news, or you get a call, and you have a terrible reaction. You don't want to embrace it. You want to erase it! How many of you wish you had a giant eraser? And isn't that what we've been trying to do most of our lives when things go wrong?...

Any time we feign anything, we do so out of fear that without that "persona" to protect us--to make that impression we want--we won't get what we want. This whole way of thinking is secret self-sabotage. Your consideration of the two special insights that follow will start you down the path to a whole new kind of self-command.

All of life's innumerable "shake-ups, breakups, and wake-ups" take place within what we call the "present moment." This ever-open window into life--through which we see the newness of life unfolding before us--is something much, much greater than all of the individual events that pass through it to reveal it.