Today we ask that you cherish your friends.

It is always good to connect with a feeling of love for your friends in this life.

This can, of course, include animal friends, and friends who are no longer in physical bodies.

It is always good to hold a loving space for those who love you, or who have loved you in the past.

Many of you are lucky enough to have true friends.  A true friend is someone that you feel very relaxed with.  Someone with whom you can let your guard down, and feel at ease.

A true friend is someone who can really listen to you.

It is good to practice being a true friend to others.

If you are the kind of person other people feel at ease with, then many doors will open to you.  If you are a good listener, many doors will open to you.

The truest of friends does not judge.  A true friend just listens.

In learning to be a true friend, you can begin by being a true friend to yourself.

Can you be at ease with you?  Can you just listen to you?

It is good to cultivate the quality of friendliness — toward yourself, and others.

Someone who cherishes their friends will find that the world itself gets friendlier toward them.

Today we ask that you not be afraid of who you really are.

Those of you who are open to these words probably have a sense that you are much more than you appear to be.

You are not just the boy or girl, man or woman who was born in that location, to those parents, on that date.

You are not 22 or 46 or 67.

You are not “Joe” or “Lisa” or “Richard.”

You are not thin, or overweight, or average.  You are not short or tall.    You are not black or white.  You are not gay or straight.

You are not the sick person, or the mentally ill person.  

You are not your “I.Q.”

You are not the lawyer or the nanny or the clerk or the unemployed person.

You are not the struggling artist.

You are not what’s in your bank account.

You are not the mother or the father or that child, or those children.

You are not the house you own.

All of that is just a character description.

“Joanne, aged 42, born in Long Island, New York, father is an attorney, mother is a schoolteacher.  Educated at Princeton.  Works as an editor for a publishing company in New York.  Currently resides in New Jersey with her husband Steve, a photographer, and an 8 year old daughter and 4 year old son.”

So you read that, and maybe now you think you know Joanne.  You might have a whole story about Joanne.  You might judge her, or envy her, or be intimidated by her.

“Joanne” does not actually exist.  She is a made-up person.  

You cannot know a person from their character description.  All that does is a create a wall that stops you from truly connecting with that person.

You cannot know yourself from your character description.  All it does is create a wall that stops you from truly connecting with yourself.

Who you are, who you really are, has very little to do with your character description.

And many of you are beginning to realize that.  Many of you are discovering that the character description is not enough for you.  That some part of you yearns to step beyond it, to go deeper.

That is your True Self.

Your True Self is not named Bob or Bill or Mary.

Your True Self is not a chiropractor or an accountant.

Your True Self cannot be measured by numbers, or possessions.

Your True Self does not have an age.

Your True Self was never born, and it will never die.

And there is a part of you that knows, deep down, you are so much more than this.

Please don’t be afraid of it.

Your character description, your persona, is a chrysalis for the butterfly of the True Self that is even now stirring within you, waiting to emerge.

It may feel very frightening to you, but really it is your best friend, your true companion, that loves you beyond all measure.

Do not fear it.

Today we ask that you be gentle with yourself.

Most of the people who are open to these words are “sensitive” beings.

There is nothing wrong with sensitivity.  On the contrary, it means you are finely tuned, and open to a deeper reality.  The five senses of the human are extremely limited.  Most humans possess, in nascent form, other senses that are tapped into a greater awareness.  “Sensitivity” is a sign that these additional senses are more developed.

And yet sensitivity can make living in the modern world a real trial.

Sensitive individuals tend to do better in quiet, open spaces.  Urban environments that are cut off from the natural world are very challenging.  Much of the energy that one is exposed to via the internet and TV is highly disruptive to sensitive individuals.

It is no coincidence that, historically, monks and sages usually lived in quiet seclusion.

This means that even a spiritually advanced sage who spends hours each day in meditation may have a hard time coping in a noisy city.

If a sage can’t handle urban life, why should you expect yourself to have an easy time coping with it?

It is only natural that sensitive individuals might experience some very difficult and challenging symptoms in the face of modern existence: depression, anxiety, panic, fatigue, and many stress-related illnesses.

So please don’t feel like something is wrong with you if you can’t cope with modern life.

Nor should you feel cursed and doomed because you can’t live in a monastery, or a secluded retreat.

Wherever you are now, it is truly where you are supposed to be.

The key is to find ways to give yourself some “monastic” peace and quiet, even if you lead a busy modern life in a city.

Please give yourself time away from the TV, computer, and phone each day.

Please give yourself time outdoors, under the sky, with trees and plants around you.

Please give yourself quiet, meditative time.  Enjoy a daily meditation practice, or participate in activities that help you get present and grounded within your body — like yoga, dance, hiking, biking, swimming, and so on.  

Such activities are very stabilizing for a sensitive person.

And please don’t be hard on yourself if you “lose it” sometimes.

Even sages and yogis find city life jarring and disorienting.  Perhaps you are more spiritually developed than you think.  

Today we ask you to really know that you are not in control.

Some of you who are open-minded and spiritual will readily admit this to be true.

And yet still there may be a part of you that believes that if you just evolved sufficiently, you would become very powerful, in a worldly sense.  You would be able to “manifest” things.  You could manifest money, fame, and success.  Of course, you would use your powers for good.  You would be a very good wizard, a very good witch.  You would help the world with your powers.

In other words, you would be in control of reality — but for the good!  You would be on the side of good, and use your powers to oppose the dark forces of the world.

This kind of thinking will, alas, get you nowhere good.  It is really somewhat delusional.

Enlightenment is not about becoming powerful, in the external world.

Enlightenment occurs when one lets go completely of needing the external world to be different from what it is.  It arises out of a state of total love and acceptance of what is, with no desire to change anything.  It is certainly not about being a rich and famous good witch or wizard.

It is not about manifestation.  It is not about control.  Control is, by definition, of the lower, ego-driven self.

The obsession with manifestation is no different from the alchemists of old.  Such people would spend their whole lives searching for magical elixirs and spells, and trying to control spirits.  They may have wished to do good with their powers.  But really it is a waste of time.

Such people are still completely caught up in the external world.  And they are always rather dissatisfied and unhappy.  When you imagine witches and wizards hunched over bubbling cauldrons — when you imagine “mad scientists” — do they ever seem happy to you?

So don’t hunch over a bubbling cauldron, looking for the secret, trying to control reality and manifest things.  You’ll wind up with bad posture, and won’t get any fresh air or sunlight.

Let go of all of that.

Enlightenment occurs right now, in this moment, or never at all.  It cannot happen in the future.  Only now.

It comes only through going inside, into the still center within you.  There are no words, no thoughts in that place.  Instead, there is peace, calm, and acceptance.  Most of you have accessed this place at some point in your lives.  It is always available to you, no matter what is going on externally.

The most direct way of accessing the still center is to quiet the thinking mind through meditative practices.

Ultimately, in the still center of things, worldly power is quite meaningless, and the desire for it is perceived as childish.  

Such things may come to you.  But if you are lucky, they will come only after you have truly let go of seeking them.  

Today we ask that you pay attention to the ways in which you cling and grasp at things.

Almost everyone clings and grasps.  It is not a bad thing.  Little children cling to their parents.  Clinging and grasping is what very young beings do, especially when they feel unsafe.

With healthy children, the time always comes to let go of mama and dad and go off into the world.  If the child feels secure, this transition can go very smoothly.  If the child does not feel secure, it can be a difficult transition.

All of life is like this.  When you are young, you cling and grasp.  As you grow into mature beings, you learn to let go with grace.

Ultimately, in this life, you cannot really hold on to anything forever.  One of the great markers of growth and maturity is the ability to let go with grace.

You let go of the past.  You let go of experiences — both pleasurable, and painful experiences.  You let go of your cravings, your addictions, your ego-driven ambitions.  You let go of the people you love, allowing them to live their own lives.

You let go of your youth, as you age.

At death, you let go of your physical body, and your attachment to this world of form.

These transitions can be easy, or they can be hard.  It all depends on your state of mind.  It depends on how much you tend to grasp and cling to things, even as it is clear that life is pulling you away, and you must let go.

There is no greater skill to cultivate in life than the art of letting go with grace.

For people who let go with grace, life is like a beautiful dance.

And it is okay that most of you aren’t there yet.

You are a very young people — human beings, that is.  And you are all learning.  Always learning.

Trust that if you let go, reality will be there to catch you, like a loving parent.

Whenever you notice yourself clinging and grasping, please try, ever so gently, to let go.

You will see that things usually go more smoothly when you do.

In time you may become very good at letting go.  It is a skill that increases with practice, like any another.  And it is never too late to learn.   

Today we ask that you know what it is to really love someone.  

Love, in its pure form, is a very innocent thing.  It swells from the heart.  It is what you feel playing with or cuddling a beloved animal.  It is unconditional.  It asks nothing of the other.  It accepts the other fully and completely.

Confusion arises when one begins to feel possessive about another person.  “This person is mine.”  “This person belongs to me.”

It is most common to feel this way about a lover, or a child.  But it can happen in any human relationship.

Suddenly, the pure love becomes mingled with fear.

What if I lose this person?

What if this person changes, and stops loving me?

What if something bad happens to this person?

I must do something to protect this relationship.

I must keep this relationship safe.

And now darker behaviors begin to emerge.  You will do anything to protect the relationship — and that includes controlling and manipulating the other person.  There is a clinging, grasping quality to the relationship.

Ultimately, this clinging and grasping destroys the love that was once at the heart of the relationship.  It is a very sad, and all too commonplace, occurrence.

If you truly love someone, you must accept, right now, that you cannot forever keep them as they are right in this moment.

Children grow up.

Beloved friends and partners pass away.

It is inevitable.

People change.  They enter new phases of their lives.

Sometimes they may do things that seem very unsafe to you.  You cannot stop them from doing such things through force, or manipulation, as well-intentioned as you may be.  That will only worsen the situation.

All you can do is love them.  You must keep returning to love, in its purest, most innocent, most accepting form.

The greatest of all loves is the love that can let go.  The love that doesn’t cling, or grasp, or try to keep things the same way forever.

Let go.  Let go.

Trust that the love you feel is not lost, and will never be lost.

Release your loved ones to follow their paths.  Let them go.  It is the greatest gift you can give.

Today we ask that you meditate on the power of things that appear to be weak.

What does this mean?

In your world, you tend to believe that powerful things are strong, and aggressive.  In order to get anything done, you must use force.  You must yell at problems.  You must whip things into shape.  You must “power through.”  And many of you believe in the necessity of violent action, under certain conditions.

In short, your image of strength and power is not all that different from a gorilla’s.  It involves a lot of big muscles, and chest-beating, and howling.  That is the only way to dominate one’s reality.

But really, this isn’t true at all.

The strongest things in your reality are totally invisible to you.  The forces that bind atoms and molecules, the force of gravity — you are not aware of these things, for the most part.  And yet they affect you at every moment.

Tiny bacteria are stronger than the strongest of men.  Individually, they are weak, and easily destroyed.  But of course bacteria, in numbers, can kill the strongest man.

A glass of water does not seem very strong.  Water seems weak.  Of course, it carved the Grand Canyon.  When it forms a tsunami, you witness its power.

Air is invisible, and yet the wind wears down mountains.

A newborn baby is in many ways stronger than the strongest adult.  Weak as an infant may appear to be, she can scream her lungs out!

Women are considered the weaker sex — yet they create new life within their bodies, and give birth.

So it is you live in a topsy-turvy world.  Everything is backwards.  What you believe to be strong and powerful is not strong at all.  What you don’t pay attention to, what you consider invisible or weak — that is where the true power lies.

Therefore if you wish to align yourself with that which is truly powerful, you must align yourself with that which may appear to be “weak.”

It is counterintuitive, but absolutely true.

Align yourself with what is invisible — the air, the space, the seeming emptiness.

Be fluid, like water.

This is what happens when you stop arguing.

If you are like water, then you can get under doors and walls.  

If a gorilla attacks a pool of water, the water is not hurt.  All that happens is the gorilla gets wet.

Today we ask that you release the need not only to argue with other people, but with reality itself.

For many, arguing with reality is such a continuous part of their consciousness that they do not even realize they are arguing with reality.  It is like explaining the existence of water to a fish.  A fish does not think about water.

So what does it mean to argue with reality?

You argue with reality every time you think that something shouldn’t exist.

Every time you think about your past, and wish that things could have been different, you are arguing with reality.

Every time you are angry or upset about something that is happening to you right now, you are arguing with reality.

Every time you are angry or upset about things that might happen in the future — like aging, or dying — you are arguing with reality.

For those who believe in God, it could also be called arguing with God.  Many people are very angry at God, and argue with God all the time.

This argument is so chronic that some people truly do not know what it would be like to live without it.

You can try, and see for yourself what it is like.

If life itself is your opponent, if you are always angry about the world and the way things are… just try, for a moment, to let it go.

Stop arguing.  Stop wrestling with life, with the world, with the way of things, with God.

Notice, first of all, how hard it is to do that.  How much resistance you may feel.  How loud the voices are in your mind that may protest, that may say it is wrong not to argue with reality, when reality is so flawed and unfair.

And don’t argue with that either.  If you can’t stop arguing, don’t argue even with that.  Just let it run.  Notice what it is doing.

But if you are able to relax a little, just notice what happens.

Perhaps you don’t like who you are.  Perhaps you don’t like your circumstance in life.

If you could appear in a heavenly court and argue your case before God, what an argument you could make!  How well you have rehearsed it.

But what if you showed up in that imaginary heavenly court, all set to make your big argument…

… and the words and anger just disappeared, and melted away.

You simply sit there, with God.

And you don’t argue.

Right now, you can simply sit there, wherever you are.

And instead of arguing with life, you just sit with it.

You sit with your life, in an open space.  You sit with life itself, in an open space.

For a moment, you don’t argue with it.  You don’t tell it how it’s all wrong.  You don’t list off all the injustices.

You just sit with life, with reality.

Maybe feel some curiosity.

What is reality up to?  Maybe it’s not so terrible after all.  Maybe it’s not your opponent.  Maybe it’s not against you.

So what is it up to?

Look at some situation that upsets you.  Without arguing against or judging reality, maybe just get a little curious.  What’s really going on here?

It is very good to stop arguing with reality.

When you make peace with life, life has a way of becoming peaceful.  

Today we ask that you let go of your need to argue.

The knee-jerk reaction to hearing this is usually something like: “Well, if I don’t argue, then I will be rolled over!”

But this isn’t true.

Not arguing your point of view does not mean being a doormat.

You can always say “No.”

In fact, saying “No” without arguing or defending your viewpoint is usually more effective.

Arguing a point of view automatically creates “sides.”  Suddenly, you are at war with an opponent.  You are defending yourself, and attacking them.  Naturally, the more they feel attacked, the more intractable they will become.

There may not even be a real person who you are arguing with.  How much time do you spend arguing with mental projections of other people, in your mind?

Try it.  Just try not arguing.  You can start with those mental projections, the imaginary voices in your head that you have arguments with.

What happens when you stop arguing with the voices in your head?

The projection dissolves.  Pay attention, and see.  The moment you decide to stop arguing with a voice in your head, that voice will lose all its power.

Argument is a form of defense.  When you argue with a voice in your head, you are defending yourself against that projection — and in doing so, you make the projection feel more real to you.  When you stop defending yourself, all the energy will go out of the critical  inner voice.  Watch, and see.

It is true in life.  When you stop arguing, you end the dualistic game of Us vs. Them, You vs. The Enemy.

Instead, you are left with the space of open possibility.

Without the argument, you are just left standing there, with another person, in an open space.

And now you can become curious.  Now you can ask this person: what do you really want?

Perhaps now that you aren’t arguing with them, you can actually listen to what they are saying.

This doesn’t mean that you have to do what they want, or go along with them.

But you will be much better able to determine your course of action after really hearing the other person out, instead of reactively arguing and not really listening at all.

You can always say “No.”  And you do not need to justify or defend your “No.”

We are not talking about situations in which violent force is being used.  We are just talking about verbal arguments.

Try it.  Even though you think you will “lose” if you do not argue, what you will discover is that when you let go of the need to defend yourself, you actually have nothing to lose.

Today we ask that you look at the ways in which you are distracted.

You live in a world in which many people have no ability to focus.

The rise of the internet and smartphones has magnified this problem.

People have lost the ability to focus.  Children grow up unable to focus, and sit still.  How would they learn to do so, when their parents are always running around, multitasking?

Multitasking is an extremely inefficient, poor form of work in which very little actually gets done.

Calm down.  Calm down.  Focus.

A nervous, distracted mind cannot get much done.  You may appear to be very busy, but really, not much is getting done.

To really do anything in this world requires concentrated effort.

This is not the same as “working hard.”

Some people confuse “spending time sitting in front of a computer” with “getting things done.”

You can sit in front of a computer for sixty hours a week, and accomplish very little.

Or you can sit down for one hour of concentrated effort, and do a great deal.

“Concentrated effort” means total focus on the task at hand.

You are not checking email, or Facebook.

You are not browsing the internet, or texting someone.

You are not daydreaming.

You are 100% focused on the task at hand.

A great deal can be done in this way, in little time.

But this requires some training of the mind.  Most minds, these days, find it nearly impossible to totally focus on anything for a length of time.

That is why cultivating meditative practices is useful to you — on a practical level.

The mind that knows how to empty itself, and focus totally on the breath, is a mind that can empty itself and focus totally on a task.  

Learn to meditate.  It is very simple.  Here is one way to do it.

Spend time away from your computer, phone, and TV.

Go outdoors.  Take a walk.  Go to a yoga class.  Get back in your body.

The more you settle your mind, the more you can actually do.

And it is not about “hard work.”

It is about relaxing into a calm, alert state.

There is nothing virtuous about a nervous, distracted, unhappy person forcing himself to sit in front of a computer and grind away at a task.

It is far better for a relaxed, calm, alert person to sit down to a task, work with total focus, take regular breaks to empty out and rest the mind, and stop the moment she feels any sense of mental “grind.”  That is a sign to step away from the task, go calm down, and return when calm is restored. Or else do focused work on another task in which the “grind” is not felt.

There is nothing hard about working in such a way, and a calm, alert person can accomplish in one hour what it might take a nervous, distracted person ten hours or more to do.

Your energy is very precious.  Conserve it, by learning to be calm and stable in your mind.  Then you will get more done, using far less energy.