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.

We love to be shown qualities within us that are positive. But love often shows us what is un-loving within us, much as the light of the sun creates shadows. To understand this is to realize that even in the darkest moment of some unwanted revelation, we are never without love; it is always there, even if -- as clouds sometimes hide the sun...

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.

How many times in your life have you acted not just against yourself, but perhaps against others because your actions were uninformed, and you were moved prematurely into a conclusion? Too many times to count really. And most of these premature conclusions had some negative taint to them -- judging somebody, arriving at some insistence based on incomplete information.

For the majority of us, what we call being renewed has nothing to do with what is real renewal. Mostly what we feel as renewal is when some idea or a hope that we have gets fulfilled, filling us in turn with a sense of excitement; and then, in that feeling of being full of ourselves, comes a certain kind of pleasure that we take as being the same as self-renewal in this life.

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.

Most of us carry, buried in the depths of ourselves, untold amounts of unconscious woe. Regardless of our religion, skin color, social position, or cultural conditioning, psychological pain plays no favorites... and we all pay the price of the ensuing blame game.

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.

We've all had moments where, by a glimpse of conscience, we suddenly recognize, "I am being prodded; pushed to respond with a reaction in the same way I've always been... but I have experienced the outcome, the karma of expressing that negativity, and God help me, I know I cannot do it again!"