Today we ask that you release your need to make simple things complicated.

What does this mean?

Life is really a very simple thing.  It is at its best when you are just experiencing it, without analyzing it.

That is why vacations can be enjoyable for people.  Life on vacation tends to be simpler than life at home.  You wake up, eat, see the sights, or relax on the beach.  You are more present with everything.  Ideally you are not sitting around ruminating about your life problems when you are on vacation.  You have left that behind.

Ordinary life can be like that, too.  It is possible to wake up with a sense of pleasant excitement even in your ordinary day-to-day lives.  You do this by keeping things simple — simple, the way they are on vacation.

There is only so much anyone can do in a day.  You wake up, eat, perform tasks, do things.  It is good to have a playful approach to life — that is what makes it simple.  Children experience life in a simple way, when they are very young, before their well-meaning parents and teachers complicate things for them.  This sense of play is what makes a vacation enjoyable.

You may ask: how do I play at all the tedious things I must do?  How do I play at the meetings, on the phone calls, paying bills, and so on.

There actually is a way to stay light-hearted and simple in all of these activities.

It is the analytical mind that complicates matters — that tells you life is a tedious chore, that tells you “You deserve better.”  The mind creates projections about what you ought to be doing.  How to “improve” yourself.  How to “maximize your potential.”  It tells you, when you are performing a task, that you should be doing a better job at it.  Or else you should be living a different, better life where you would not have to perform such tasks at all.

What silliness.  These are the kinds of thoughts that make a complicated mess out of the elegant simplicity of existence.

These thoughts say you should somehow do more and have more right now, when it is impossible to do more than you are currently doing, or have more than you currently possess.

Truly, if people stopped this kind of ruminating, they would do more, what with all the energy they’d save.  Obsessive thinking uses up a huge amount of physical energy.  

That is what happens on vacation.  You think less, so you experience more.  Life is fresh, and immediate.  Simple.

It can be that way all the time.

Today we ask you to meditate on the old adage that “haste makes waste.”

It is a saying not often heard in these times.

These days, haste is considered a cardinal virtue.  Everything must be done twice as fast.  And if you can do it twice as fast, then why not double that speed?  Everything must be fast, and cheap.  That is how profits are maximized.

We cannot overemphasize how destructive this ideology is.

It is simply not true.  Doing things faster does not make them better.  In fact, it usually makes things worse.

Objects created with haste are not built to last.  They have a shoddiness.  They break down.  They will not stand the test of time.

Work done with too much haste often contains errors.  A car that is repaired hastily will probably just break down again soon.  You will have to bring it back to the shop — thus wasting your time.

This applies to everything.

Sometimes haste may truly be necessary.  But it is simply insane to expect that everything must be done in a rush.

If humans had their way, they would speed everything up.   Pregnancy would last three months, not nine.  Trees would grow in a week.  Thankfully, humans cannot have their way with everything, no matter how much your mad scientists labor to make it so.

Timing is everything.  Things must be allowed to grow and gestate in their own time.

Tampering with genetic code to speed up the growth process damages the organism.

The addiction to speed is destructive.  The fact that many humans feel required to utilize stimulants in order to fulfill their workloads is tragic — for stimulants, used on a daily basis, are destructive to the brain and body.

Slow down.

Slow down.

Please understand that by slowing down and accomplishing things with care, you will actually save time in the long run.  

For you will create work that is solid, strong, and built to last.  There will be fewer errors.  As a result, there will be much less waste.

Building shoddy, disposable, poorly made things wastes everyone’s time and money — both for the creator, and the consumer.  

Haste makes waste.

A few days ago, we asked that you let go of the need for other people to be different.  Today we ask you to let go of the need for you to be different.

One of the greatest forms of wisdom to cultivate is knowledge of who you are.

Everyone is different.  Everyone is unique.  You have a unique pattern, a unique energy signature.  Only you possess this pattern.

You can think of this pattern like the different shapes in a child’s block set — square, circle, triangle, rectangle, and so on.

Part of the key to enjoying life is understanding what shape you are, and not attempting to force yourself into a slot where you do not fit.

A square block cannot fit into a round hole.  A rectangular block cannot fit into a triangular hole.

Certain shapes are complementary.  They “fit together.”  Other shapes do not fit together now matter how much one shoves.  You cannot force these things.

And yet people are always trying to force themselves into jobs where they do not fit, and into relationships where they do not fit.  These mismatches never work, in the long run.

You know when something is a good fit with your personal energy signature when it feels good to you.  When it feels energizing, not draining.  When you do not feel compressed, or forced, or conflicted.  That is a sign of a good fit.

It is good to know who you are.  What your shape is.  What feels good to you.  What excites, and energizes you.  The kinds of environments in which you thrive.

When you are being yourself, there is a sense of relaxed, yet energized presence.  No energy is being drained by the attempt to be something you are not.

Think how much energy it takes for a square to pretend to be a triangle!

Today we ask you to understand that the future does not exist, outside of your mind.

There is no future, as such.  The only place it exists is as a concept that you think about, and imagine.

You may spend a great deal of time imagining potential futures.  That doesn’t make them any less imaginary.

But here is what is true — when you are ruminating about the future, you are not present in your body, in the here and now.

Moreover, it takes a great deal of physical energy to run projections of the future inside your mind.  So not only are you not present, you are actually draining your physical body of energy right now.  Your fantasies are literally exhausting you, and making it much harder to focus on whatever it is you need to do right at this moment.

It is natural to fantasize about the future, but really, it does not help you at all in the here and now.

It is one thing to make plans that you can put into effect right now — like saving money to go on vacation, or booking plane tickets.

But when you are fantasizing about things that you can do nothing about right now, that are predicated on events you have no control over in the present moment — this is actually not good for you.

For it takes you away from the present.  Worse, it creates a reality in which you cannot be happy until this imagined future somehow manifests itself.

In short, fantasizing about the future is a recipe for depression, anxiety, and exhaustion.

It is one thing to make wedding plans after you are engaged.

It another to make wedding plans before you have even met the person you are marrying.  

The best way to have a joyful future is to create joy in your present moment.  

Right now is the only future you actually have.

Many people are familiar with stories of people who die suddenly, or who are diagnosed with terminal illness, and abruptly discover that the future they were fantasizing about is not to be.

Most people in those situations feel deep regret that they did not enjoy their lives more before receiving the diagnosis.

Truly, you cannot know what will happen tomorrow.

So here you are.  Right now.  Do you want to spend this moment with your head off in some imaginary future?  Or do you want to make the most of what has been given to you at this very moment.

Your lives are really so full, and rich.  The more present you are, the more you will experience this.

Today we ask that you take time to listen to your body.

The fast-paced world of modern existence is very hard on human bodies.  While it is true that many people live longer because of greater hygiene, access to antibiotics, and so on, a host of diseases has arisen to take the place of the old maladies.  Modern diseases are largely stress-related, and are connected to not listening to the body.

In older days, slaves and serfs were worked to death in the fields.  Nowadays people work themselves to death out of their own free will.

More than anything, human bodies require rest.  If you observe the behavior of animals and small children, you will see that they sleep a great deal.  Adult humans have no less need for sleep.  They just don’t allow themselves to do so.  They think it is being “responsible,” but in many ways it is anything but.  For the practice of not resting and overworking one’s self in the long term leads to illness, which is a terrible burden to one’s family and fellow humans.  Therefore one could argue that being a workaholic who subsists on minimal sleep is the furthest thing from being responsible.  

Do you want to be a responsible human being?  Rest.  Sleep.  Give yourself downtime.  Take weekends.  Give yourself true time off.  Listen to your body, when your body is crying out for rest.  If you can no longer rest without the aid of drugs and relaxants, then the matter is urgent.  It is very possible for people to work themselves to death.

Some people may truly have no choice in these matters, like the serfs and slaves of old.  But most modern people do have a choice — and they choose exhaustion, in the belief that it will bring them a grander lifestyle and help them climb ladders.  They may believe they are making sacrifices for their children.  But really this is not so.  Many children would prefer their parents to be happy, healthy, and present, even at the cost of their lifestyle, rather than unavailable, stressed out, tired all the time, and unhealthy.

Listen to your body.

Listen to your body.

Today we ask that you let go of your need to make sense of everything that happens.

Sometimes it is best to just sit in the feelings and sensations of the present moment.

Many humans have a tendency to overanalyze what happens.  Their minds are perpetually spinning and churning, inventing stories to make sense of what they perceive — stories that may actually be quite wrong.

The analytical mind is a powerful and useful tool, when used in moderation.  But when allowed to run wild it can be destructive and even monstrous — giving rise to paranoia, and other unreal fantasies.

In other words, the need to make sense of everything can be a shortcut to madness.

For example: imagine you get an email from someone you do not know very well, that contains only a fragment of a message.

If you do not feel comfortable immediately writing back to the person for clarification, your analytical mind may go berserk trying to make sense of the partial message.  What could it possibly mean?

The mind may leap to some startling conclusions — and only later discover that it was entirely wrong, that the message was simply garbled, and incomplete.

Your entire perception of reality is like this.

It is like trying to make sense of something that your logical mind cannot understand.  Whole religions have been invented to make sense of reality.  Some wild stories have arisen to describe reality, often as a warped byproduct of the analytical mind attempting to make sense of something it cannot make sense of.

This is why the wisest of men let go of their need to analyze and make sense of reality, and just experience it.  Out of that presence arises true clarity.  There is no longer any story about reality.  It just is.

Truly what most pious people consider the Word of God is like a garbled, incomplete email message.

If you wish to communicate clearly with God, send your own message.  And then sit, and be present with experience, with what is happening, without analyzing things.

You’ll get an answer.  One that is felt, not understood.

Today we ask that you release your need to have other people be different from who they are.

Spending one’s time complaining about other people or wishing they were different is a terrible waste of time, energy, and mental resources.  

It is like being angry at water because it is wet.

People are who they are.  Often they do things that may frustrate other people.

Many children are constantly frustrated that things are the way they are, and not different.  They are always getting angry at their parents and siblings for not doing what they want, and frustrating their desires.

For the most part, wanting other people to act differently is a very childish thing.  Unfortunately, most adults do not outgrow this behavior.

If a person wants to change, that is one thing.

If they come to you asking for help, that is one thing.

But it is another thing to insist that people should change and be completely different people, when they have no desire to change.  

It is like wanting a cat to be a dog, or a dog to be a cat.  Only a very childish person would insist that a cat ought to be more like a dog, or a dog more like a cat.

Part of growing up, really growing up, means accepting that cats are cats, dogs are dogs, and water is wet.  Only a child would expect otherwise.

They are literally countless ways for people to spend their time and energy that is far more useful and constructive than wishing for other people to be different.

Imagine a world in which people wish for red lights to be green, for conservatives to be liberals and liberals to be conservatives, for children to always put their socks away neatly, for ants not to swarm around crumbs left on the ground, for there to be more hours in the day, and for their spouses to be completely different people.

It sounds like a crazy world out of a children’s story.  But it is your world.

Nations could be fueled on all the wasted energy of people screaming at other people to be different.

Today we ask that you let go of your need for specialness.

This is related to the message from a few days ago, about letting go of the need to “be somebody.”

“Specialness” is an insidious desire.  For when specialness is the primary motivating force behind one’s actions, there is nothing you can do that is pure-hearted and truly loving.  

All action becomes a matter of calculation:

If I take this action, will it increase my specialness?

Will I receive more attention?

Will I gain status?

Will I gain wealth?

Will I gain power?

Will I win fame?

If these kinds of questions are the motivating force behind one’s actions, it is a very sad thing.  Humans in the grip of this consciousness never experience lasting joy, love, or satisfaction.

For the desire for specialness cannot ever be fulfilled.  People who need to be special will never be special enough — no matter how much wealth, status, or fame they accrue.  They will always be hungry.  They always crave more, like people who are addicted to a terrible drug.  Indeed, the desire for specialness is an awful addiction.

If you observe yourself craving specialness, or making these kinds of calculations, please know that it is not going to work out for you in the long term.

You may briefly fulfill the desire in the short term, but in the long term it will always fail.

This is why we observe so many tragic stories about celebrities — people obsessed with specialness, who cannot bear not being the object of the world’s attention.  What miserable lives such people lead.

If you are doing what you do in the hope of increasing your specialness in the eyes of the world — know now that you are doomed to long term failure, and suffering.

Do what you do out of love.  This is the key.

Not for specialness, fame, wealth, or status.  

Do it because there is a deep sense of joy in the action.  It is nothing special.  But there is this wonderful satisfaction that comes with a job well done.  

No one else needs to know what a good job you’re doing.  You know.  That is all that matters.

And if other people notice, wonderful.  But your own sense of well-being is not predicated on their attention.

It is not about being special.  It is about doing what you do, with a sense of love and commitment.

Live in this way, and you will know true and lasting joy.  

Today we ask that you stop grinding away at life.  Stop the “daily grind.”

What does this mean?

Many of you have been taught that to accomplish anything in life, it is necessary to push, force, and exhaust yourself.

This is absolutely not true.  It is false.

If you observe the ways of nature, you will see that there is no grinding or pushing.  Nothing can be forced.  Seeds germinate and grow.  They cannot be pushed or forced, without damaging the organism.

It is the same with all life forms.

Relaxation is the key to true growth.

By relaxation, we do not mean be a couch potato, and do nothing.

Relaxation is a state of mind.  It is an absence of nervous tension, and fear.  It is a confident awareness and focus.  It is a sense that things can be done without the use of force.

People force things when they are nervous, and afraid.  They do not trust that things will work out without the use of force.  They cannot relax.  They cannot allow nature to take its course.

As a result, people who give in to using force often damage or kill what they wish to cultivate.  They usually damage themselves in the process.

A good gardener does not use too much water or over-fertilize.  A good gardener plants seeds and gives them just the right amount of patient nurturing, without forcing.

“Grinding” and “growing” do not go together.  If you wish to grow, you cannot grind.

Whatever it is you wish to accomplish — do not be forceful about it.  Do not push, grab, or suffocate.

Living well is like making love.  To live well is like being a good lover.  You do not push, grab, or force the universe to give you what you want.

You relax, and flow.  There is presence, will, and focus.  But no force.  No grinding.

Life is a juicy thing.  Don’t grind at it.