As a race of beings, we have become completely complicit in the pain that visits us. A thought from the past pops up and punishes us. Someone says something we don't like, and we try to punish them and feel the pain of the blame that we place on them. There is an endless series of relationships with a part of our own nature that has convinced us that the pain is produced by a condition outside of us...

Question: I live as if things are coming to an end. No matter what good thing is happening in my life, I am looking at it as just temporary. This is horrible for me, and I don't want to miss out on any more of life! Answer: If you want to be free, I'm going to explain "how." Why would any of us want to meet every moment of our life with a certainty that, "Nothing's going to work out...

It's there... and then it's not, The shadow of the sun. You can neither control the moment it appears, Nor the way it runs to hide itself, Mingling in the shadow of dusk... Until it simply just disappears.

If you were empowered to change life -- in order to give yourself whatever is always good and true for you to know and have -- would you ever make any other kind of changes? For example, would you fear unexpected events, such as a loss of some kind? No! Even though they may come as a surprise, you already know that they herald a new beginning of something better.

There isn't an instant in which you and I are not being touched by life for the purpose of life being changed by its own touch. Creation is never not happening. But to take part in it, to be a participant in it, requires that we understand that presently we are meeting life from a mind that is fast asleep in itself because it is intimately connected with desire that imagines a way to resolve itself.

Have you ever heard within you, not necessarily in words, something to the effect of "Oh no, not this again!"? Perhaps we're looking at the latest flame of our heart and we see a fire in his or her eyes, but it's not because they are looking at us. In that moment we no longer see the moment unfold as it is, but rather we stand there transfixed -- experiencing the moment as we are; and we are not really present!

Our present experience of life, its happiness or sorrow, is nothing more or less than what certain unconscious parts of us tell us it is. Before we can hope to change our life experience, we must stop trying to re-write the Book of Life and work instead to awaken ourselves from the dreams of the unseen storyteller within us.

Question: In this time of economic downturn, is there anything to say to those of us who have experienced losing a job or a home? I don't know what to say to my friends and coworkers who are suffering. It's easy to tell them that the universe will provide and that something better will come along when I'm not the one in their position. Any words of wisdom would be appreciated.

Imagine for a moment you're driving home from work, or wherever, and that you've just come from having a pretty rough day. As you drive along, your eyes see the road before you, but your mind is in the past. It's very busy re-running all of the day's unpleasant events.

Have you ever noticed how the more negative you get, the more difficult everything about your life becomes, including being able to do the simplest things? It's like suddenly sinking into dark molasses, where not only can't you move, but everything you don't want seems stuck to you!...

Whenever the right two stones are struck together, a spark will appear; there is a flash of light. This same principle holds true whenever we "collide" with life. In that instant parts of us that we've never seen before are illuminated. For instance, who hasn't crashed into that dreaded moment when we realize that someone we love has had a change of heart toward us?

It seems natural to fear moments we don't want, to avoid any knock at the door of some untimely event. But it's not these moments themselves that we are afraid of: what we fear is our reaction to them, so that we can't see that this experience we don't want... is actually the pain of a negative reaction as it unfolds within us.