Any time you are sitting at home and a thought comes and says, "What about this? What about them? What's going to happen if this?" you are burdened. You are carrying on your back, in your heart, in your mind, the weight of a set of thoughts and feelings you believe have the right to ride you to where they tell you to go... as if you were saddled by a donkey!

You're misled into thinking that when you're worried about something you are actively engaged in solving a problem. But you aren't. When you're worried about something, you are actively being ridden by a host of thoughts and feelings using you to transport that nature where it wants to go.

How did things get so topsy-turvy, so upside down?

Every time you identify with a fear, every time a regret from your past appears, every time some sense of being inadequate to a moment makes its presence known... without recognizing it because it's so familiar to you, you have remanded yourself over to a nature that you are supposed to be in charge of, and that is not supposed to be in charge of you!

But nothing in life stands in your way of getting free save for what you have yet to understand about your own nature. That's it! You can come to understand that whatever is in my way, no matter how troublesome, is part of the way. What defeats you when you meet a limitation is failing to understand that your own nature produces the condition by resisting it.

What would it mean to start using your life deliberately to see these truths and gain a whole new understanding about your nature? How can you act on this knowledge? Here are three key ways:

Be still.
Have you ever noticed the angrier you get, the faster your mind moves? Does anxiety slow down or does it gather mass? Does fear ever go, "Let's rest"? No. Every negative state accelerates by the power of resistance. We think when we resist we're slowing stuff down so we can get a handle on it! But now, I'm going to sit here and be as present to myself as I can.

Remember.
I remember hearing what I know is true: that resistance is an accelerant, and that everything chattering to me is lying to me. I mustn't engage with these voices when I'm afraid. I mustn't listen to the part of me that tells me, "It's over. It's done. They're the worst." Because the more I attend to those parts of me that don't want the moment, the bigger the moment gets!

Surrender.
When I'm still and I remember, I understand my sole task is to endure the nature trying to drag me into its deliberations, its justifications, its explanations of why if I don't fight, get angry, or regret, I'm missing the mark! But my new understanding teaches me that to hit the mark -- the only way to have proper authority over this present nature -- is to witness it as it acts to convince me of what it wants without having to think about it.

Who you are does not want to be angry. But it isn't enough to regret or resent your own anger when it appears. You have something inside of you - an awareness, a living light - that by its very existence understands, without one thought, the actual nature of anger, fear, hatred, and regret. And when you can see for yourself the nature of something, you will not allow it to induce you to its actions or let it ride you anymore.

Rather you work to realize as much as you can about it. In that revelation, a new integration can take place, and a new order of yourself can surface that can no more be saddled by a donkey than a shark can attack a star.