Today we ask that you explore different ways of “getting what you want” in life.

Many people believe that in order to “get what you want” in life, you must go after your desires with force. You must be pushy, and aggressive.  You must strategize and plan, and continuously work toward your goals.  You must “work your ass off.”

But there is another way.

Consider the spider.

The spider does not venture forth in aggressive pursuit of her prey.  Instead, she finds a good location, and puts all of her energy into building a magnificent web.  Once the web is constructed, she waits patiently to see what comes her way.  She conserves her energy, and springs into action only when something lands in her web.

The spider is an excellent role model.

Many of you could benefit from being more like spiders.

So what is your “web”?

Your web is your personal energy.  It is the frequency at which you vibrate.  It is determined by the strength, health, and coherence of your energy field.

Practices like meditation, yoga, nurturing exercise, deep breathing, massage, energy work, and healthy dietary practices all help to create a strong, coherent personal energy field.

This is your “web.”

By turning inward rather than outward, and working on your “web” rather than try to “make things happen,” you will conserve your energy, become healthier, and become open to embracing the unexpected.  

After all, you never know what is going to fly into your web.  It might be much better than what you thought you wanted in the first place.

But remember: the spider is the soul of patience.  Once she builds her web, she waits with the utmost patience.  If she were impatient and impulsive, like most humans, she might abandon her web prematurely out of frustration.  Do not make that mistake.  Be patient.  Wait and see what comes.

Be like the spider.  Build your web with care and love.  Then wait, and see what comes.  With patience, you won’t be disappointed.

Today we ask that you pay attention to addictive behaviors.

Though people tend to think of addictive behaviors in fairly narrow terms — the drug addict, the alcoholic, the gambling addict, and so on — addictive behaviors are extremely commonplace.  It is very likely that much of an average person’s behavior in any given day can be defined as “addictive.”

An addictive behavior can be defined as something you do mindlessly and impulsively, out of habit or craving, that delivers a temporary rush or high but inevitably winds up making you feel worse.  You tell yourself “I shouldn’t do this,” and yet you keep doing it.  There is some measure of guilt associated with the behavior.  At the same time, there is a feeling of helplessness.

So many people are addicted to sugar or caffeine or the internet or TV or video games.  They often have a sense that they are engaging in unhealthy behavior, but they feel quite helpless in the face of it.

And there are many more people who don’t understand that drinking caffeine or watching TV mindlessly for hours on end is unhealthy for them at all, since “everybody does it.”  People used to feel that way about smoking cigarettes and drinking excessively — “everybody does it.”

The first step in dealing with addictive behavior is correctly identifying behavior as addictive.

All addictive behaviors lower your state of well-being.  After the momentary rush or gratification, you feel worse.  Anxiety, irritability, depression, and fatigue are common indicators of the after-effects of addictive behaviors.  Addictive behaviors create an unstable mental and physical state.

So: addictive behaviors make you feel worse, and often they make you feel guilty.

Just being able to correctly identify behavior as addictive is an enormous step.  When you are conscious enough to wake up and say: “I am behaving like an addict right now,” you are more than halfway to healing and health.

So just start paying attention.  You do not have to change your behavior at first.  Just start paying attention to mindless, impulsive behavior.  Notice when you are anxious or irritable or depressed or exhausted, and look at the things you did that day, or the day before.  Pay attention.  Make connections between your general mental and physical state, and your recent behavior.  

When you get drunk, you often have a “hangover” the next day.  There are many kinds of “hangovers.”  An agitated mental state or depleted physical state is often a sign of an addictive “hangover.”

Once you get more alert, a natural desire will arise to lessen the addictive behaviors.  Whenever you do make a healthy choice for yourself, please let yourself feel very good about what you have done.  This will positively reinforce the healthy behavior and encourage you to keep doing it.

As a rule: it is good to engage in behaviors that create a lasting sense of peace and well-being in your mind and body.

It is not good to engage in behaviors that create a sense of agitation, disorder, and poor feeling in your mind and body.

Pay attention.  Pay attention.

Today we ask that you learn not to care about what other people think of you.

Caring about what other people think of you is a swift road to a miserable life.

This does not mean, be rude to others, or insensitive.

It just means, do not live your life seeking the approval of others.  That is a game you’ll never win.

Healthy relationships are based on love, not approval.  Love is unconditional.  With love, it is entirely acceptable if the other person does something you don’t approve of, or don’t like.  You may dislike the action, but you don’t love the person any less.

Consider the healthy parent’s relationship with a baby.  The baby is always doing things the parent doesn’t like, but that does not mean the parent loves the baby any less.

Sadly, often as babies mature into children, the relationship with the parent becomes more approval-based and conditional.  The unhealthy parent has a specific notion of who the child ought to be.  When the child fulfills this role, the parent approves.  When the child veers from this role, the parent disapproves.

The sets up an unhealthy pattern that may continue throughout a person’s life, if it is not dealt with.  The child will continue to play roles in order to win approval — with parents, teachers, bosses, spouses, and ultimately the person’s own children.

This is a tragic state of affairs.  When this happens, the person may live out a whole lifetime without every truly being herself.  She may go from the approval-seeking child, to the approval-seeking student, to the approval-seeking employee, to the approval-seeking wife, to the approval-seeking mother.  In turn, she’ll raise her own children to be approval-seeking.

Such a person is always playing a societally-approved role: the dutiful daughter, the dutiful student, the dutiful employee, the dutiful wife, the dutiful mother.  She may live and die with her true self suppressed — never knowing who she is under all these roles.

The only way to break out of this cycle is to let go of the need for approval.  This is, in part, what it means to truly become an adult.  It is okay if other people disapprove of you, or think that you’re living your life in the wrong way.  They are entitled to their opinion — but it is really none of their business.

Very often when someone lives a life of freedom and being true to themselves, this arouses fierce disapproval in others.  There will be a whole choir of clucking hens shouting: “No, you’re doing it wrong!”

But where would we all be if not for the brave ones who are capable of staying true to themselves, despite the clucking hens.

Please do not spend your whole lifetime enslaved to other people’s opinions.  You will be terribly unhappy if you do.  And if you have children, you will consciously or unconsciously teach them to be the same way, schooling them for lives of misery and role-playing.

Disapproval cannot hurt you.  Truly, it can’t.  Even in the face of fierce oppression, there is nothing more valuable to you than your soul.  Your true, unique self is beyond price.  Be true to it.  That is what it means to be in integrity.

People who lead lives of integrity are a blessing to everyone they touch.

Today we ask that you let go of attempting to control your future.

It is impossible.

Ask anyone who has experienced a sudden major health crisis, a severe accident, the unexpected death of a loved one, or a natural disaster whether or not it possible to control the future.

It simply cannot be done.

If you believe that you have gotten to the place you currently are in life because of strategy and control, you are in for a rough road ahead.  Life has a way of disabusing everyone of this notion before the end.

You are not in control.  You have never been in control.

This is a very terrifying thing to contemplate, for most people.  And yet if you could fully embrace this, you would feel an exhilarating sense of freedom, and release.

You cannot control your future.  You cannot predict what will happen a year from now, or even tomorrow.

This does not mean, drop all your responsibilities, empty your savings account, and run wild through the streets.

It just means: all that energy you expend trying to map out and control your future could be better spent elsewhere.

If you were capable of dropping your fantasies and projections about the future, then you would be able to deal with what arises in the present moment with total focus and clarity.

If even a tiny fraction of humans lived in this way, it would create tremendous good in your reality.

The best way to help your future self is to get clear, focused and stable within the present moment.

Attempting to strategically manage and control your future is impossible.  Anyone with even a small amount of wisdom and life experience knows this.  Yet even knowing this, most people will not act on this wisdom.

This is because most people are deeply addicted to the feeling of control.

Like all addictions, the control addiction leads nowhere good.  Even if it is giving you a high right now, sooner or later it will break down.  You will never be able to maintain the feeling of being in control.

The first step to breaking the control addiction is by acknowledging that it is an addiction.

If you could heal yourself of the control addiction, you would feel a profound sense of peace, and relief.

You cannot control your future.  Accept this. Acknowledge all the clear evidence in your life that this is true.

When you let go of the need to control the future, life is an exciting adventure — what will happen next? — instead of an endless series of dashed hopes and unfortunate events.  Be open to everything that arises.

Today we ask you to be conscious of the idea that you cannot really know what is good and bad in your life.

Many of you have had very unpleasant experiences that in the long term worked out for the best.

Perhaps you lost a job, or went through the painful end of a relationship.  Years later, you have enough perspective to see that the job or relationship was not good for you, and that it was a good thing you were compelled to move on.

At the moment of distress, you may be very convinced that what is happening to you is bad and wrong.

But once sufficient time has passed, you may be able to perceive the positive impact the distressing event had on your life.

This may indicate to your that your assessment of an event’s relative goodness or badness is probably inaccurate.

Here is a key to enjoying this life:

The most joyful people in the world have a basic faith in the goodness of reality.  This basic faith gives them a resilience in the face of distressing events.  It does not take long for joyful individuals to shake off the trauma of distressing events, put them in perspective, and find a way to perceive goodness around the event — how it led them to a better place.

The most miserable people in the world are the opposite.  They have a basic mistrust of reality.  This mistrust makes them fragile and breakable in the face of distressing events.  They do not bounce back quickly.  They may never bounce back at all.

Miserable people obsess over their traumas, their wounds, their grievances.  They have no perspective.  They cannot perceive that almost everyone goes through trauma.  Rather, they perceive themselves as uniquely afflicted with an unfair share of suffering.  Many years after the distressing event, the pain is still fresh, and they keep reliving it.  They believe that these distressing events have led to only bad things in their lives.  They believe they would be in a much better place if the traumatic events had not occurred.  They can’t get over it.

Most people exist on a continuum somewhere between the joyful and miserable types.

Joyful people are no in way luckier than miserable people.  Some joyful people are very heavily afflicted with difficulty in their lives.  So one’s level of joy or misery is not based on external factors.

Joyful people have a basic attitude of trust, and faith.  From this unfolds a deep resilience, and a sense that the path they are on is leading somewhere good, even if they go through dark patches.

Miserable people have a basic attitude of mistrust, and suspicion.  From this unfolds a fragile, easily breakable ego identity.  They tend to go through life kicking and screaming.  They’re always convinced that awful things keep happening to them for no reason.

Which would you rather be?

And please know that it is a choice.

You can, in every moment, choose to have faith.  Or you can choose mistrust.

It’s up to you.

Today we ask you to know that everything you need to create a good life for yourself is available to you in this moment.

Most people do not believe this.  Most people believe that a special condition must be met before a good life is possible.

For some it is money and security.  You believe that you can have a good life only after you are secure, or possess a particular kind of lifestyle.

For some, it is a relationship.  You believe that you can have a good life only after you unite with your soul mate.

For some, it is health.  You believe you can have a good life only after you acquire better physical health, or mental health, or both.

For some, you need to look more physically attractive before a good life is possible.

For some, you need to achieve success and renown before a good life is possible.  You must be recognized for your achievements.

For some, you need to complete a particular piece of work before a good life is possible.  You need to finish your novel, or your thesis, or building your dream house.

For some, a good life is not possible until you have a child.

For some, a good life is not possible until your children are grown and out of the house.

For some, a good life is not possible until you retire.

Do you see the problem with this thinking?

Do you see that when you set special conditions for a good life, the bar will always keep moving?

If the good life is something you believe can only happen in the future, after special conditions are met, then here is some very bad news:

The good life will never come.  You will always feel unhappy and dissatisfied.

It will never change.  Perhaps for a brief moment you will feel temporary relief as some particular goal is met.  But then that nagging dissatisfaction will set in again.  What you have will never be good enough.

Here is some very good news:

You can have a good life.  In fact, having a good life is completely possible right now at this very moment.

It begins when you recognize that you already have a good life.

It begins when you cherish and appreciate all those things right now that make your life good.

And you can make your good life even better, right now.

You do not need anything special to do this.

There are certain practices — like meditation — that you can begin doing today, and it will cost you nothing but a little of your time.  Ten minutes, let’s say.

Ten minutes of daily meditation will make your good life better, and costs you nothing.

Going for a walk outside in the fresh air costs you nothing.  Just a little bit of dedicated time.

Making healthier eating choices may cost a little bit, since organic food may be more expensive than fast food — but even there, you may find options that will not break your budget.  Not to mention, of course, save you the enormous health care costs associated with poor dietary habits down the line.

You can go online and learn how to do some simple yoga practices that will not take much of your time, and will benefit your body greatly.

All of these practices are available to you right now at this moment.  Nothing about your life needs to change in order for you to implement them, and they will make your good life better.

Very simple practices like: drinking more water; taking breaks from the computer to get up and stretch your spine so that you do not get compressed from sitting too long; and in general spending less time on the internet so as not to burn out your nervous system — all these practices make your good life better right now and cost you nothing.  Allowing your body and mind to rest costs you nothing.

So that is the bad news, and the good news.

The bad news is: your fantasies of a good life in the future will never come to pass.  Even if you achieve your goals, some new source of dissatisfaction will inevitably arise.

The good news is: you have a good life right now.  And you have the tools to make it even better.   

Today we ask that you question your stories about other people.

It is natural, when interacting with others, to create a kind of mental story about them — as if they are characters in a film.  You decide whether they are a friend or enemy.  You identify them as a particular kind of person.  Often you come up with all sorts of ideas about what they should or shouldn’t be doing with their lives.

Of course, if you stopped to really consider things, you would realize that your understanding of these other people is very limited.

Even with people you interact with constantly — you do not and cannot know them, as you do yourself.  (It is actually questionable that you even know yourself, but that is another matter.)

The problem that arises is, rather than interact with people as they are, you interact with your own mental projections of them.  The people in your life become fictionalized characters in your mind.  They may have a very active life in there — one that is not based on reality in any way.  Your projection may be vastly removed from the real person.

Take, for example, celebrities.  Many of you feel like you “know” celebrities because you see them on TV and in films, and because you read about their private lives via celebrity gossip.  If you were to meet a celebrity in person, you would feel familiar with them.  You might have all kinds of judgments about what they should and shouldn’t be doing.

Of course, what is any of this actually based on?  Nothing.  You do not know this celebrity at all.  You have heard stories about this person that may have no truth to them.  From these stories, you have created a projection.  The projection is not the person.  The projection exists in your mind.

Two different people may have two radically different projections of the same person.  This is often true in politics, where one person sees a political figure as a hero, and someone in the opposing party sees the same person as a villain.

Who is right?  The correct answer is: neither one.

Projecting can be quite dangerous.  Sometimes people create mental stories about other people that allow the process of dehumanization, or demonization.  Violence may follow.  Slavery and genocide may follow.

So please know that when you sit in judgment over other people and feel very certain of your rightness, you are engaging in a potentially harmful practice.

All of you have probably felt wrongfully judged by others at many points in your lives.  Perhaps you wanted to protest: “But that’s not really true!  You don’t know me!  You don’t understand my situation!”

This is what you can imagine every time you sit smugly judging someone else.  This person looks into your eyes and says: “You don’t really know me!  You don’t understand my situation!”

And here is something that is true on the deepest level of your reality:

The less you sit in judgment over others, the less you will be judged.

So if you dislike the experience of being judged, it is a very wise practice to refrain from judging others — even in your mind.  Especially in your mind.

You cannot ever truly know the heart and mind of another person.  Therefore it is best to be kind and gentle with others.  Don’t you appreciate it when other people are kind and gentle with you?

Today we ask that you make sure to drink enough water.

Many of you know that it is a good practice to drink plenty of water.  Yet even knowing this, most of you do not drink enough.

In the hot summer months, hydration is especially crucial.

All of your body’s functions are directly connected to water.  For those of you who deal with physical or mental health issues, one of the simplest ways to improve your condition is just to make a conscious effort to drink more water in the day.

Here is a good practice you might try.  In general, it is good not to sit in one position for more than fifteen or twenty minutes at a time — especially in front of the computer, which has a heating, drying effect on the nervous system.

In order to make sure that you do not sit too long in front of the computer, set a timer to fifteen or twenty minute intervals.

Every time the timer bell goes off, get up and move around.  Stretch.  Touch your toes.   This is a very good time to drink a glass of water.

Drinking a glass of water every twenty minutes, especially when you are in front of a computer, is an excellent cooling practice for your body and mind.  It is also good to urinate frequently, as that keeps the body very clear of toxic build-up.

For any of you who deal with physical or mental health issues, insomnia, anxiety, depression, or any stress-related symptoms, the very simple practice of drinking more water will help you — and it costs much less than pharmaceutical drugs.

For best results, set a timer, and make sure to get up out of your chair and drink a glass of water every fifteen or twenty minutes.  These “hydration breaks” will actually help you focus more clearly on your work, as well as relieve your body and spine from the tension of being seated in one position for too long.

For a cooling summertime drink, and to help with absorption, it is good to add slices of cucumber to your water.

Often things that are very good for you are not all that complicated.

Today we ask you to know that your worth is not determined by external conditions.

Your worth is not determined by your bank account.

Your worth is not determined by outward markers of achievement.

Your worth is not determined by how virtuous you are.

Your worth is not determined by how productive you are.

Your worth is not determined by how creative you are.

Your worth is not determined by what a hard worker you are.

Your worth is not determined by your purity of mind or body.

Your worth is not determined by how much other people appear to approve of what you do.

Your worth is not determined by what a good parent you are.

Your worth is not determined by the beauty or fitness of your physical body.

Your worth is not determined by your intelligence.

Your worth is not determined by your spiritual piety.

Your worth is not determined by how “green” or environmentally pure you are.

Your worth is not determined by how frugal and penny-pinching you are.

Your worth is not determined by how generous you are with other people.

Your worth is not determined by your age, race, or gender.

Being married or having children does not make you worth more.

Prizes do not make you worth more.

Owning real estate does not make you worth more.

Your worth is not determined by the condition of your body — whether it is healthy, or sick.

Suffering does not make you worth more.

Your skills and abilities do not make you worth more.

Your education does not make you worth more.

Your resume does not make you worth more.

Is the pattern becoming clear?

Your worth cannot be determined by external factors.

Every human infant born is worth exactly the same as every other human infant born.

And no human adult is worth less than any human infant.

Your worth is intrinsic, and it is beyond measure.

If you truly understood this, you would never feel worthless again.

If you want to stop feeling worthless, then stop believing external factors give you worth.  Stop measuring your worth in comparison to other people.

Nothing you ever do will make you worth more than you are right now at this moment.

If you could accept this, you would be free.

Today we ask that you know that your home happens to be wherever you are this moment.

There is a strong theme of “exile” that runs through your reality.  You are told the tale of the Garden of Eden, from which you were exiled forever.  Many such myths exist.  One feels a deep yearning for a home that is somewhere else.  This home is usually idealized as a paradise.

Some yearn to return to an idealized past — like the descendants of aboriginal peoples, who yearn to return to the perfection of their ancient tribal ways.  Some yearn for a physical piece of land — as the Tibetans yearn for the return of Tibet, or the Lakota Sioux yearn for the return of the Black Hills, or fundamentalist Jewish settlers in disputed parts of the Middle East yearn for the return of their Biblical homeland, while displaced Palestinians in the same region yearn for their own return.  Some yearn for “the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth” — the world to come after the Christian Apocalypse, an idealized heaven on earth.

These yearnings are, alas, fantasies.  They are like the fantasies of children who yearn for a world without homework.

There is nothing wrong with the desire to create and dwell within a kinder, saner world.

But you do not require a special piece of land or a time machine or the Apocalypse to make this happen.

In fact, these desires actively block you from creating a kinder, saner world right now — for they imply that it is impossible to create a kinder, saner world until some special condition is met.

These beliefs imply that until the lost land is restored, or the Apocalypse comes to pass, your special heaven on earth cannot exist.  Therefore you can give into cruelty and insanity so long as it is a means to the end of creating your special heaven on earth.

Hitler believed the same thing.  He was so obsessed with creating his vision of heaven on earth that it gave him the license to engage in war and genocide as part of the clean-up effort.

And so you see how the desire for utopia leads directly to the creation of Hell on Earth.  Hitler thought he was creating Heaven.  What the rest of us know is that he created Hell.

If you yearn for a kinder, saner reality, that begins right here and right now, wherever you are.  It does not begin after some injustice is corrected or your ancient lands are restored or Christ brings down the Kingdom.

It begins right here.  Right now.

If you yearn for paradise, begin living as you imagine an inhabitant of paradise might live.  Right now.

There is no idyllic home somewhere else.  You are not here in this body in this location by accident.  It is no mistake that you are you, in this body, in this time and place.  You are placed here to work with what is right in front of you in this lifetime.  There is no other place you are supposed to be but where you are right now.

Paradise starts at home.  Here.  Now.  It cannot be found in the past or the future.  That is a fantasy.

Home is wherever your feet are planted at this moment.  The Garden of Eden lies there, and nowhere else.  Work with what you have been given.