Look around you, wherever you may be and at any moment. Try to see through the roles of actors and actresses crossing this or that stage of life; look past their appearances and seeming differences and you'll find all share one thing in common: people do the things they do in order to try and provide themselves with a feeling of being complete. They sense that there is a great gap in their lives. More to the point: they feel cut off. And it's true, we are cut off. The reason why we remain this way, despite all the money we make, or the trips we take, and all the other things we do to resolve the nagging psychological discomfort we feel, is because we don't know what it is we're cut off from! And we don't understand in what way we are cut off. We just know at a deep, unconscious level that we too often feel isolated and incomplete.

So we pursue the solutions that we've offered ourselves, but none of them brings the ultimate sense of completion we desire. They cannot, because the problem does not lie in the state of our finances or our relationships with others. It does not lie in the way our parents treated us or the way the government runs things. And all our endeavors to fix our problems that are directed toward these areas do nothing to get at the root of our unhappiness.

The pain we feel at any time, no matter what we believe to be the cause, is due only to the fact that we are indeed cut off from knowing our connection with the True Source of our own lives. We do not feel ourselves to be an essential part of the world around us, receiving energy and direction from something higher. Instead, we feel at enmity with life, forced to make our way, to prove ourselves, to provide for ourselves a sense of wholeness and completion.

So what is it that blocks us from seeing the fullness of life that surrounds us on every side?

The false nature immediately jumps in at every new moment to impose its distorted interpretation on every event, to judge in terms of its notion of how things should be. Before anything new or spontaneous in us can experience life directly and understand things in a fresh, new light, something old and mechanical intercedes to protect -- not who we truly are -- but who it perceives itself to be. As each "me of the moment" arises, it turns in upon itself to give a sense of wholeness to its momentary, fictitious world; to give itself a sense of completion, and in doing so it cuts us off from Life itself!

The truth here is troubling to those self-pleasing pictures we all have of ourselves, but results reveal the rule: We are not awake in our own life experience. The miracles are missed because we, ourselves, are missing.

Bound up as we are within the closed world of our own "me of the moment," we see virtually nothing other than what that false self wants for us to see. We miss the miracles around us -- and lose their vital life lessons in the process. What are intended to be our new experiences are taken in and twisted, turned into something familiar that the false self knows how to deal with.

How many times during any day does an event evoke a "me of the moment" that then gathers thoughts and energy to it, and turns in to create a limited, imprisoned self? How many times do we miss the opportunity to catch this process, stop it in mid-step, and break out? Each time we fall for the false nature's trick of turning in, we are removed from real life. Each time we break free, we give ourselves the chance of living a direct life, in the first person.

It may sound too simple, but the truest things in life usually are. The secret of winning a new life is to refuse to turn in on yourself. Instead, turn it loose. Turn loose your despair, your fear, your false excitement. Turn loose the self-image that seeks to entrench itself in the moment and take temporary control. Open up the circle. The false self wants to turn in, so it can close the circle and make itself feel complete. That's all it knows to do. Its goal is to perpetuate itself. The antidote is to turn it loose.

Turning it loose means to become aware that we're cutting ourselves off each time we turn in, and then, when the challenge comes, to refuse to do it.

Each time we turn it loose, we find ourselves psychologically floating in a kind of unknown space, uncertain who we are supposed to be in that moment. These new sensations may be disconcerting at first, but then it dawns on us that this is an experience to savor.

When we no longer live an artificial life by living within the self-created world our own minds produce, we are free to experience ourselves and life as we and it really are. In the fullness of that first person original moment, we no longer feel cut off.