Question: Many paths emphasize the importance of balance and alignment. Can you comment on what it means to be "aligned"?
Answer: Real alignment would be the ability of an individual to participate in life as it's happening. We have a mindset that starts falsely from a comparative basis. So when we hear the word "alignment" we think to ourselves as a positive outcome, in the flow. And when we think of qualities like that, we attribute them to things we want or hope to achieve. And real alignment can't have ambition in it. Because if it does then I'm outside of the stream, I'm outside of real life, trying to somehow or other coerce it in order to accomplish what I believe would be a sense of alignment. The truth is, if a person is truly aligned in life, they are participating in an energy in which there's no sense of themselves at all of being in alignment. Because if you think you're in alignment, you're not. There's you analyzing a picture that was produced in your mind -- and everyone, look, who hasn't had a good moment? Here you're having a good moment and you think to yourself, this is great, I'm having a great moment -- well now you're not having a moment anymore. The mind has captured a sensation, produced an image of it, and now you're in a theater called self going, aren't I grand? I'm aligned with stuff. So real alignment is actually the absence of the self that is trying to achieve something so it can feel aligned.