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?

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.

I'll be whatever you want me to be, says Life or the Now. I'll treat you the way you treat me. If you see me as a problem, I will be a problem to you. If you treat me as an obstacle, I will be an obstacle.

For every problem that is solved, another one pops up. As long as the present moment is seen as an obstacle, there can be no end to problems