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?

Space consciousness mans that in addition to being conscious of things which always comes down to sense perceptions, thoughts, and emotions there is an undercurrent of awareness. Awareness implies that you are not only conscious of things (objects), but you are also conscious of being conscious.

Most people's lives are cluttered up with things: material things, things to do, things to think about. Their lives are like the history of humanity, which Winston Churchill defined as one damn thing after another. Their minds are filled up with the clutter of thoughts one thought after another.

dependent on form. They don't realize that what happens is the most unstable thing in the universe.

People believe themselves to be dependent on what happens for their happiness, that is to say de

For the ego to survive, it must make time past and future more important than the present moment. The ego cannot tolerate becoming friendly with the present moment except briefly just after it got what it wanted.

As long as it runs your life, there are two ways of being unhappy. Not getting what you want is one. Getting what you want is the other.

Even past or future moments only exist when you remember or anticipate them, and you do so by thinking about them in the only moment there is: this one.