Never mind what has happened in the past. Follow your heart. Cultivate the inner attitude of what I call "falling forward." This means that whenever we fall down (or even get pushed aside) that we fall in the direction of our intention; so that when we regain our feet, and start over (as we must), we are that much closer to our aim -- which we cannot help but be when we will remember to "fall forward." Nothing in the Universe has the power to hold us back from our heart's real desire, but sometimes we must let Life purify this wish (as it will) so that it may seem like we are being denied. We are not. We are being asked by Life what it is that we really want, and what we are willing to sacrifice for that. Remember: the limit of our present view is never the limit of our possibilities, but to change what is possible requires that we are willing to change how we see our life. In the end it seems that this is what Real Life is always asking us to do.

In times of stress, learn to listen to what the Extraordinary Life is trying to tell you about your True Nature, instead of searching anxiously for familiar answers to make your stressed-out self feel right again. All fearful, doubt-filled moments are secret reflections of what we have yet to understand about life and ourselves; they are not life's rejection of us or of our wish for happiness. Choose to go consciously quiet whenever there is a riot in you. Refuse to take part in the search to repair what you fear may be coming undone. Let go and watch what happens when you consciously sacrifice the fear-filled self. This new action allows the Extraordinary Life to enter into you, where its presence alone proves that all is well.

When a person gets the smallest hint of that, even a tiny indication, then a new kind of work can begin. We look out and say, "There's just nothing I can do. There's no way I'm going past this." We're not seeing life as it is. We're seeing a life that has been stopped in our own mind by a set of negative images whose negative content has decided there is only this cement-like state and there is no getting past it. It's a lie. You know why it's a lie? Because real life is not made of cement. Real life is fluid change. Nothing that we see, nothing that we think we look at, nothing we experience as being a condition in which we are stuck, nothing that we look at and see as being a solid is actually a solid. What has stayed solid is negativity by resisting the condition over and over again. That's what makes it feel so impassable, so real... but it's not.

If nothing else, if a person could just learn to realize, "I'm looking at what I want to do, and I don't see a way." When I don't see a way, what am I really looking at? Am I looking at life as it is in which everything, depending upon my relationship, is in a state of change? Am I looking at a world that is constantly changing, or am I looking at it through an unchanging negative state? I'm looking at the world though an unchanging negative state. Oh, what a discovery!

The negative state feeds on itself. All it does is tell you what you can't do. Have you ever had a negative state tell you, "You're free! No problems! Walk through this problem; it doesn't exist"? Negative states don't say things like that, do they? What they say is, "It's going to get worse. Not only is it going to get worse, but I think this is the end, because after all, what else is there now? You're a goner." That's what negative states do. And of course, without knowing that what is unchanging is the negative state pointing at the world saying the world is not changing, we simply sit back. It gives us enough dose of darkness, enough negative thoughts and feelings about our condition, that the conviction sets in that "I can't," that "I won't get through this," that "I won't get past that," and "This is too much for me."

The only thing we meet in life ever that stops us is what we don't understand about ourselves yet. That's it; nothing else. Until we understand that, what happens is that we run into that moment, that condition, that relationship that has us held up, and fear sets in. Fear starts to talk to us and tell us that we're not up to it, that we don't have what it takes. And once fear starts talking to us and that negative state sets in, we begin to see what the negative state tells us is true about ourselves... and we're not here on this planet to see life through the eyes of dark states.