How to Get from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be

Letting go is not the same as getting rid of. Letting go is allowing what is to simply be, without clinging or pushing away.

authorities on yours? That is a critical point to consider. If your neighbor, relative, or friend said the kinds of things to you that these illusions are saying to you, you would wonder why they were talking to you like that. What business would it be of theirs? And your friends, relatives, and neighbors at least are real enough to have bodies!

we always have choice in our life experience.

I will ask myself questions designed to enable me to examine the situation more carefully. “Is that true? How do I know that’s true? What if it’s not true? What does it mean if it is true? What would it mean if it weren’t true? How did I get this information? Who is defining the terms? Who is setting the standards? How can I test this?”

(It is important to remember that the behaviors exist within us even when we are not acting them out. For instance, if I am angry with my partner and thinking about leaving, I imagine packing up and moving out without leaving a note—which is my conditioned behavior, even though I don’t act on it.) With practice, we can find the very first sensation

That is, the process of learning is enjoyable only when it leads quickly and smoothly to knowing something new. How long would she enjoy the learning if she never got to know something, if she never acquired a new skill?

I find awareness of judgment to be an extraordinarily helpful tool in revealing egocentric social conditioning. I can learn a lot about myself by watching how I judge others. I can see my social conditioning in every thought and word about “them.” I encourage people to judge freely. Judge, admit your judgments to yourself, use your judgments for se

definition of meditation is “being present in conscious awareness.” To be free of suffering, we must learn to be in the moment in which life is happening. In my experience, it takes a good deal of paying attention to the attempts to be in the moment to realize how out of the moment we are.

Our beliefs, assumptions, opinions, standards, concepts, and judgments are what we call “postures.” These postures define us and distinguish us from others.