A New Earth

The primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation but your thoughts about it.

will help the child to disidentify from the pain?body. You may also want to talk to the child about your own pain?body using the child's terminology. The next time the child gets taken over by the pain?body, you can say, It's come back, hasn't it? Use whatever words the child used when you talk bout it. Direct the child's attention to what it feels like. Let your attitude be one of interest or curiosity rather than one of criticism or condemnation.

The quicker you are in attaching verbal or mental labels to things, people, or situations, the more shallow and lifeless your reality becomes, and the more deadened you become to reality, the miracle of life that continuously unfolds within and around you. In this way, cleverness may be gained, but wisdom is lost, and so are joy, love, creativity, and aliveness. They are concealed in the still gap between the perception and the interpretation. Of course we have to use words and thoughts. They have their own beauty but do we need to become imprisoned in them?

They are just human emotions, human thoughts. Your entire personal history, which is ultimately no more than a story, a bundle of thoughts and emotions, becomes of secondary importance and no longer occupies the forefront of your consciousness.

Being at peace and being who you are, that is, being yourself, are one.The ego says: Maybe at some point in the future, I can be at peace and if this, that, or the other happens, or I obtain this or become that. Or it says: I can never be at peace because of something that happened in

There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so

But don't try to be yourself That's another role. It's called natural, spontaneous me. As soon as yo are trying to be this or that, you are playing a role. Just be yourself is good advice, but it can also be misleading. the mind will come in and say, Let's see. How can I be myself? Then, the mind will develop some kind of strategy: How to be myself. Another role. How can I be myself? is, in fact, the wrong yourself

Give up defining yourself to yourself or to others. You won't die. You will come to life.

pleasure in it or believes it has a useful purpose you are becoming aware of the ego directly.

Whenever you are in a negative state, there is something in you that wants the negativity, that perceives it as pleasurable, or that believes it will get you what you want. Otherwise, who would want to hang on to negativity, make themselves and others miserable, and create disease in the body? So, whenever there is negativity n you, if you can be aware at that moment that there is something in you that takes