Whatever skill you choose to develop, imagine that you know exactly what to do. I would visualize myself calling on the energies of the universe to start my day so I felt ready and motivated to write. They have repressed their sex, they have repressed their greed, they have repressed their anger, and they are boiling within themselves. Death also happens in love on a smaller scale, in a partial way; hence, the beauty of love. Just write down everything that comes to you in the first column: What I Need to Do. Man has always lived with hope, a future, a paradise somewhere far away. And there are ways to break through your particular loneliness, no matter its causes or qualities. If you die consciously you will not forget, because there will be no gap, there will be a continuity. Thoughts are not intelligence and sentimentality is not love. Remember, again I say, it is a simple process. He could never predict when a flurry of activity would end and he would go into a slow period. Now you can do and act on only that which makes you more joyous, fulfills you, gives you contentment, makes your life a work of art, a beauty. Don't say, I am afraid. Mastery is not a cultivated thing, it is not to be practiced. Perhaps there is a reason; perhaps they have been aware of some superiority in women, the superiority of love. Nobody looks into it, and the mirror is as pure as when somebody is being reflected in it. He goes on repressing, and because he goes on repressing, he goes on accumulating all that is wrong. In reality, everything—from the amniotic fluid that surrounds us in the womb to the words we hear from our parent-figures as children to the air we breathe to the chemicals we ingest—influences our genes, causing some to switch on and others to switch off. And as a result men have been deprived of raising their own consciousness. Love can exist on all three planes, but its qualities will be different. But the child clings, and he is always born crying—every child, without exception. Focus on your breathing for a minute or so until you feel very centered and relaxed. The safest place, it turns out, is one you've been before because you can predict the familiar outcome. When you feel like crying you have to cry; when you feel like laughing you have to laugh. If desire disappears you will not be coming again. That's my whole work here, to help you to allow the unconscious. Whether it is good, beautiful, delicious, something that you would like to enjoy closely, or it is ugly—remain as far away as possible, look at it just the way you look at a film. Why am I doing it? They have found in what postures your mind takes a certain attitude, your heart takes a certain rhythm, your awareness becomes more acute or less acute. But when you are receptive and view change in a positive and productive way, you discover how many possibilities it offers and how much you can gain from change. One who belongs to emotion will begin to feel first, and then will gather all the reasons. But—perhaps counterintuitively—it's also essential to effective relationships with other people. For when you don't have confidence in yourself, it's easy for others to break you down with the slightest criticism about you or what you're doing. So if emotions are suppressed, there will be constipation. Focus on your breathing going in and out until you have calmed down and feel completely relaxed.Now imagine yourself traveling back in the past to a time when you were especially energetic. Drop from the heart into the being. Which option should you choose?We make decisions all the time—sometimes with very little or no thought—and that's fine if we're deciding whether or not to turn right or left as we walk down the street, pick up this or that while shopping, watch this or that TV program, and so forth. Your negative emotions such as anger and fear can also provide a benefit at times by protecting and defending you. When you do, you feel the same sense of assurance and know exactly what to say.Spend about five minutes going from group to group in your mind. Even simple eye contact with strangers has been proven to boost people's mood and increase their sense of belonging. You can too. If you hate death, how can you love life? They would guess, and the man would say, No, this is not my mother tongue. Only affirmation, total affirmation, brings you to reality. In exhalations, the stomach releases itself. You just have to uncondition your past. In watching, the cooperation is broken; you are no longer supporting it. Close your eyes, and focus on your breathing for a minute or so until you feel very centered and relaxed.Now take a mental journey wherever you want to get inner information—a quiet, calm place or a room where you can meet your inner expert—and ask yourself a series of questions to see if you are afraid of or resistant to a specific new idea or situation. You will be surprised, because you have been told just the opposite up to now. But a musician, a painter, a poet lives on a different plane. Just concentrate on creating what you want to happen and soon you'll find that it will occur or that your work and life situation generally will change in positive ways.Just watch. They don't have anything, but they are rich. This is actually a technique used in a rapid reading class to increase reading speed while maintaining comprehension.Now you will add in the power of your mind to imagine you are doing this. Even if he forgets it in his conscious mind, it goes on resounding in his unconscious. The miracle of watching is that as you are watching the body, your watcher is becoming stronger; as you are watching the thoughts, your watcher is becoming stronger; as you are watching the feelings, the watcher is becoming even more strong. Then if you find you can't do everything you wish, you can drop out the activities with a lower priority. Just energy, without any name, without any adjective. And you will do it your whole life, unless you allow the watcher to see the ridiculous acts that you are doing. What happened? And when you just look, the whole thing is simply crazy—because they are asking to get rid of those things but when you look at their faces, they are enjoying it. If the person says no, ask again. My feeling is that if Jesus had been able to laugh, Christianity would not have been such a calamity as it proved to be. For the first time, everybody had seen others' miseries, others' sufferings—the others' bags were just as big, or even bigger! And the second reason was that everybody had become accustomed to their own sufferings. This is going to be dangerous because the most talented people are no longer enthusiastic about life. All that is needed is to remove the ideals, because those ideals are functioning as blocks. Don't try to edit or analyze them. Is it because you really don't want to do it because you can't for a real reason, such as a conflict in time or a skill you can't acquire in time, or is a fear or resistance preventing you from doing something you really would like to do?If the reason is a fear or resistance, try saying, Yes I can, and do what you need to do to make it happen. I told you that Gandhi is an active type. Loneliness is often especially prominent when the person who died was a daily companion or routine presence in the life of the person who is grieving. Practice shifting your focus from one place to another—to the external world, to the middle between worlds, and to the internal world. Down through the centuries philosophers have been seeking and searching for the truth through the head. For example: What do I want? You open the envelope, read the letter, and feel ecstatic because the letter informs you that everything is the way you would like it to be. And Larsen's? Stress affects our food choices and the makeup of the microbiome in our gut, which is constantly communicating with our brain (something we will discuss in detail in chapter 5). Great anger is in you—maybe toward the mother, toward the father, toward the world, toward yourself, that is not the point. So the second criterion to decide is if you can move to the opposite. Those rules exist for women, not for men. Then in the society it is the boss, the politician, the leader. All falsities one day or other are exposed. Later on when the heat is cooled, the moment has passed, you become aware. They trust in the police, in the courts. Anger will not come out because anger is not there. There are many people all over the world whose families have forced them into insane asylums because they felt that was the only way to protect them. I take that as a compliment, and I'm going to get real for a second: There is such a thing as getting too comfortable. When you've come up with all the ideas you can, review them and choose those you can actually implement.Making something different or better is a key benefit of creativity and innovation, and it's the engine of progress and change that has fueled modern technology and generated the race to produce better, state-of-the-art equipment. You speak about watching the clouds of moods passing by, but you have also talked about being total, going totally into whatever is happening. Then one day you find they cannot purchase anything, and you have devoted your whole life to dollars. The whole army, the whole brigade is going past, and all the people are in the same uniform? He stopped using the term lawyer or attorney to describe himself, despite working in this capacity for more than twelve years. You see a man passing by in the hallway and you remember that he insulted you—you will find some rationalization just to console yourself that you are not going mad. In a small church school the teacher had a beautiful statue, and she was going to give it as a reward to the boy or the girl who gave the right answer to a question. One is to indulge in it; that is the ordinary thing, everybody is doing that. According to one study, eighty-two percent of older adults reported that volunteering helped them feel less lonely. If so, this is a good technique for you. Man is not a machine but an organism, and the difference between the two is very significant to understand. Your worry is simply natural because feelings are your guide, and you feel intensely; you are concerned that if you drop them, who will guide you? Go on slipping from your head to your heart, and then just take a little greater risk and slip from the heart to the being. Our childhood realities can also be denied when our parent-figures and families dismiss objective issues. They looked at Nasruddin and asked, What dream did you have?