This is a long list, but you can just memorize the headings.
Keep it somewhere you see it, and read it often. If you can live this way, your life will transform.
1. Knowing how to discriminate is one of the main keys to a happy life. Discrimination is the ability to make good choices based on values that support your life and the natural laws of life. But there is a level of discrimination beyond the purely human that most are unaware of. Whether I realize it or not, there are only two categories or orders of reality: the subject/nonduality and the object/duality. The subject is nondual Consciousness, the impersonal knowing factor shared by all, what we could call non-diversity. The object is that which is known to Consciousness, the realm of the personal and the field of existence/duality, or what we could call diversity.
It may not be clear why permanent satisfaction lies in discriminating between the two, yet it is crucial to happiness. Unknown to most is that there is a valid means of knowledge capable of unfolding the why, called Vedanta, the science of Consciousness. Basically, it comes down to one main reason: I believe it is indisputable that I am a discrete person who is conscious, that I am separate, always changing, limited and inadequate, that I am born and I die. And when I die, ‘my’ consciousness dies with me. I don’t know it, but this is the cause of all existential suffering. I am stuck in duality and cannot step out of the box. Vedanta calls this box ignorance.
But if I know my true identity is nondual Consciousness, I am not ‘in’ the box. The box and everything in it is known to me. I am the impersonal witness of the body/mind being born and dying, but I am neither born nor can I die. I know that I am unlimited, whole and complete, nothing constrains or changes me. Duality is a superimposition on me, the one and only, nondual Self, so I am always satisfied. I am the Consciousness that enlivens everyone, yet I am not a person, and all life exists in me. I have never not been ‘here’, though I have no specific location and am not bound by time. I am more like space. There is nowhere I am not.
However, science, philosophy, deductive reasoning, and religion cannot prove to me as a person that my true identity is unborn and undying Consciousness, even though it should be obvious. Only through nondual knowledge, Vedanta, can I find the means of knowledge which will allow me to step out of the box of ignorance, and provide the keys to the non-negatable logic of Existence. If my mind is subtle enough for self-inquiry and I am lucky enough to find a qualified teacher, Vedanta reveals to me my own unexamined experience. Though it seems like I experience a discrete personal consciousness that ‘belongs’ to ‘me’ alone, actually, I am only ever experiencing impersonal unborn nondual Consciousness. And so is everyone else.
But there is a catch. To know what this means for me as a person and to live this truth requires being qualified for and being properly taught nondual wisdom. I need a complete knowledge reset and psychological recalibration. Trying to remove my ignorance on my own, no matter how wise or smart I am, will not work. Stepping out of the box of ignorance/duality is very tricky because my ego will get in the way, and the Alice in Wonderland distortion of duality will fool me into thinking I am free when I have fallen down another rabbit hole.
The Only Definition of What is Real That Cannot Be Contested
Right from the start Vedanta provides me with the only definition that truly matters in life – knowing what criteria determine what is real, and that which is only apparently real. Which is simply this: 1) That which is real, i.e., nondual non-diverse Consciousness, never changes, can never be negated and is good and present in every situation, past present or future. 2) That which is apparently real, diversity/everything else, is that which is not always present, always changing and can be negated because it is not reliably good or present in every situation, past present or future. This includes who I think I am as an individual, or person.
Consciousness is the subject. Everything known to Consciousness is an object. This encompasses subtle objects like experience in the form of thoughts and feelings, or material objects, like a chair. No object can ever know the subject. Only the knower, Consciousness, knows itself, the subject, and all objects that appear in it or to it. Sentiency belongs to Consciousness, not to objects, not even me as a ‘person’. I am only a person in as much as Consciousness allows me to know this. If this doesn’t make sense to you, ask yourself if your thoughts and feelings, or a chair, know you?
How can I test this truth? Look in the mirror and ask yourself two questions:
1) How do I know what I know? Answer: Thanks to Consciousness.
2) Does the reflection in the mirror, which is me but not me, know me, the Consciousness that knows it? Answer: No.
Conclusion: The limited person I think I am is known to by another factor beyond my personal limited consciousness – unlimited Consciousness. Why does this matter?
My personal consciousness is the reflection of, and comes from unlimited Consciousness. When I am identified with the reflection in the mirror, I believe I am incomplete so I chase experiences/objects to make me complete because I believe the joy resides in objects. But the objects I chase do not contain happiness. All objects are value neutral and only have the value I give them, which never lasts. I never really find what I am looking for because unknown to me, I am the sought. The secret to a happy life is knowing that true happiness is an inside job, and does not come from anywhere else. When I know this, I love objects because I am happy, not for happiness.
2. Second to Discrimination, Dispassion towards results is another vital key. Whether I believe it or not, my true essence or identity is Unlimited Consciousness, or nondual Existence, but it is not simple to assimilate this knowledge so as to live it. There is great help on offer. Karma yoga, which is taking appropriate action and surrendering the results, consecrating each thought, word and deed in the spirit of gratitude to God or the Universe (whichever you prefer), is the antidote to all my human problems. The wisest way to live is without compromising your values or breaking dharma (the law of non-injury), accommodating yourself to life’s circumstances. Wanting things to be different is a recipe for suffering.
3. Without God-knowledge I am lost. Knowing what God-knowledge is means knowing not only the essence of my being, but honouring with gratitude the gift of life, and reciprocating. I can neither avoid nor gain God because God is all that is in existence, as well as my true essence (unlimited Consciousness) which gives rise to all that is in existence. It’s not an either/or but a both/and.
4. Humility. There is no true peace or freedom without it. God-knowledge, which really boils down to Self-knowledge, manages the childish ego and teaches me humility, which is neither self-abasement nor self-aggrandizement. It is not about being right or wrong, good or bad, superior or inferior. Humility is simply understanding my place in the scheme of things as a person, and surrender to God. It is living with gratitude, following the laws or dharma of non-injury, of accepting each moment as sacred, one that will never reoccur, containing the gift of knowledge: that I am the knower of that moment. It teaches me as the person in the world to love my fate – Amor fati – whatever it is, and to honour all life as me.
5. Ignorance of my true nature is my only problem. All my suffering and limitations are caused by identifying exclusively and/or primarily with my identity as a limited person or doer – the one who holds on to its story of pain or bliss and wants things to be the way I want them to be, not the way they are, to conform to my small idea of who I am, either through entitlement, blame or shame.
6. Be the Self. Being a person is very complicated. It may seem far-fetched to think of your identity as the impersonal, timeless, unchanging, ever present all-pervasive Self. A human mind finds this hard to compute. But being a person is harder. It involves a mind that desires and feels, an intellect that thinks, doubts, and worries, a memory that works or doesn’t, a troublesome insecure ego identity that thinks it’s a doer and responsible for getting what it wants or feels it lacks and is always anxious as a result. That believes it owns things, experiences, people, and is therefore, always either dissatisfied, worried or disappointed. And it includes a body/mind that is not only always changing and subject to entropy, but restricted to knowing anything through the five senses – it’s only means of knowledge, which is extremely limited and limiting.
7. Mind Management is key to happiness. Even If I know my true identity is the Self, I cannot get rid of the person entirely. I still transact with the world, and need to manage my mind with knowledge. The human psychological construct and the world of objects, which is really only an idea that exists in me, Consciousness, the knower, is run by three main energies called ‘gunas’ in Sanskrit, which means ‘ropes’, because they bind. They are in brief: sattva (peace/intelligence/clarity), rajas (action/passion/desire/extroversion) and tamas (dullness/denial/introversion). These are the basic and most identifiable qualities of the three, but there are many derivatives.
Without knowledge of these energies and how they bind, we are bound to them as they cycle constantly and drag the mind along with them. They form all our inborn and learned likes and dislikes, positive and negative. Knowledge of these three energies will not change them but will allow us to manage the mind just like one tames a wild frenzied horse (rajas), gets a lazy uncooperative cow (tamas) to move, or revels in the graceful movement of a swan gliding on a silent lake (sattva).
8. Pain and bliss are the main drivers of human action or inaction. The human construct is motivated by two main things: 1) The psychological pain body – my dislikes. These are all my bad tendencies as well as the bad things that happened or are happening to me that hurt me, and make up the negative life narrative I carry around with me. 2) The psychological bliss body – my likes. All the good tendencies and things that happened or are happening to me and made or make me feel good, peaceful, happy which I want to hold onto. It makes up my positive life narrative. We all want to escape the pain body and live permanently in the bliss body. But without knowing my true identity as Consciousness, or the three energies that run my psychological make-up as a person, means I believe bliss is something to obtain, not who I am. So even if bliss happens, it comes and goes. I am always chasing it instead of being it.
9. Identify with my Primary Experience not Secondary Subjective Human Experience. I have two main choices in life. I can identify with my subjective, changing, limited personal secondary experience, and make that my reality. Or I can identify with my impersonal unchanging primary unlimited experience as Consciousness, which is always prior to my personal experience, at any time, in any place, past present or future. The choice is mine to make, but to make it requires a qualified mind that has been divested of ignorance (duality) of its true nature through the correction of nondual thinking taught by a qualified teacher.
10. Who you are as a person is not real but it exists and cannot be denied, because you can experience it. If you believe you are a person, fear and desire will always be part of your life. Freedom from and for the limited personal identity is not found in denial of it or trying to perfect it but in understanding its origin and make-up, and what drives it. It is found in knowing the difference between What you are as the eternal Knower, and the person who is known to it. Therein lies the knowledge of your changeless ever-present essence as Unlimited Love, and the fearlessness to truly live, love and be loved.
11. You are the sum total of Love. As much as we fantasize about finding love, nobody can give it to us, or take it away. If we cannot find it in ourselves we will never find it nor truly give it. As a person, how you love, how you give, how much you allow yourself to be loved, and how you suffer is just about the sum of who you are. Everything in life is a subset of one or a function of all four. If you know your true essence to be eternal, you will be fearless, and not hold back love for or from anyone because everyone is known to be you, and you are love.
All the same, it is wise to seek people who love and give generously, who have the strength to suffer without causing injury. Remember that only strong people are ‘safe’ people. Though ‘weakness’ can be a judgment term for vulnerability, it is only weak people who manipulate and injure because they are so insecure and afraid. The measure of strength is not the absence of vulnerability. True strength is not found in power, prestige, fame or fortune, but in the ability to carry one’s vulnerability with such self-awareness, humility, dignity and courage so as not to harm yourself or others. Seek to be such a person.
12. Everything we have or have lost is given to us. Nothing we have is thanks to our efforts alone. All is given, even that which is seemingly lost. And what is taken away can be a greater gift than what is given. As hard as it is to believe at times, all is eventually recompensed, every effort of the mind and heart eventually requited, though not always in the form we imagined or hoped for. Life, God, or the universe, knows best what we truly need, and it is not often in keeping with what we want or think we need. The adage that there are two ways to be unhappy – getting what we want and not getting what we want – is sadly, very true.
Self-knowledge redeems all of life’s disappointments, but it does not make us immune to life. What makes all of its heartbreaks bearable is that Self-knowledge gives us the ability to see how the destruction of a dream becomes the fertile compost of new possibilities. Everything you are or are not today is to be found in the tapestry of your life, what some call ‘the past’, but which is always present. Examine what is growing in the garden of your life – what you are wilfully blind to, have nurtured, denied or neglected. See how your likes and dislikes drag you around like the tail wagging the dog. Be ruthless in pulling out the weeds and pruning back the overgrown trees. Keep the garden of your life simple and clean. Open your heart and mind to God, to love, to life. Refuse the urge to close it for fear of hurt. Keep it open no matter what.
13. Your likes and dislikes are your worst enemy. Most of us don’t give a second thought to our likes or dislikes. In fact, we take it for granted that we are entitled to them and they are what make us who we are. Whereas in fact, they are our greatest impediment to permanent satisfaction. While not all likes and dislikes are negative nor necessary to eliminate, if any are set in concrete and dictate how you interact with the field of life, you are in bondage to them. They are tyrants that rule your life. You will never be happy with what you have, satisfaction will elude you and you will be in a constant battle with life because life does not care what you want. It gives you what you need. If you want to be happy GIVE UP YOUR LIKES AND DISLIKES!! Turn them into preferences if you must, as long as they do not bind.
14. Your thoughts and feelings are objects known to you, not commands. Each thought and emotion we have is predicated by our likes and dislikes, which are in turn predicted by the three gunas. If you never do inquiry into what drives you, you will be self-obsessed because your thoughts and emotions, positive or negative will be in the driver’s seat. Your inner voices of fear and desire, of diminishment and dissatisfaction will never shut up. You will not only be a neurotic mess but in denial about it. Nothing kills wonder and joy more truly or is more tedious than self-obsession. You can ameliorate your neurosis and narcissism through self-development and psychotherapy, which does help.
But you can only truly outgrow the small limited self and its dependence of having things your way by identifying with your true identity as the unborn Self, Consciousness. Manage that willful childish ego that wants what it wants when it wants it with karma yoga and surrender to God, or Consciousness. Identify the guna behind every thought or emotion, and objectify both. The gunas and the thoughts and emotions they predictably produce are objects known to you. They are not who you are and they are not commands. There is nothing wrong with feeling, it’s natural and human; but don’t allow feelings to lead. If you really want to be happy, sacrifice all your likes and dislikes, all your disturbing thoughts and emotions, good or bad, on the altar of karma yoga.
15. Control those wayward senses, especially your speech. Verbal entitlement is as bad as verbal diarrhoea. Learn to keep your mouth shut and value silence above your compulsive need to say anything. Listen twice as much as you speak. Learn to speak with great care, respect and humility. The mindless words we speak fragment the mind and can destroy trust, joy, respect, self-esteem, in an instant. Words are powerful, and some can never be reversed. Learn that trust and respect take a lot to build, and only a few unwise words to destroy. You could do or say things you’ll regret for the rest of your life.
16. Give up helping. Kill the illusion that you know what anyone else needs and must tell them, unless they genuinely ask for your advice and you have words of wisdom to impart. Abandon your illusions of helping others, ‘making a difference’, or giving advice. Learn the difference between reaching out if it’s appropriate, and trying to save a soul. Go with reaching out. Leave the saving to God. There is a reason for everything we may never know. As Krishna says ‘doing the dharma of another is fraught with danger’. This is true for both the one helped and the ‘helper.’
17. Make gratitude your best attitude. Renounce your bogus entitlement. We are entitled to nothing, ever. Grace is earned. Learn gratitude, it is a gift, not an obligation, and benefits you, not anyone else – other than that you will be a pleasure to be around. Ungrateful people are always a pain. Don’t supplicate, expect or demand. Appreciate, give, contribute, receive. Serve life in every way you can, no matter how small.
As the poet, Kahlil Gibran said:
“All you have shall someday be given; Therefore give now, that the season of giving may be yours and not your inheritors, for to withhold is to perish. See first that you yourself deserve to be a giver, and an instrument of giving. For in truth it is life that gives unto life—while you, who deem yourself a giver, are but a witness”.
To this I add to truly give, we need to receive, or we stop the flow of love just as surely, if we don’t.
18. Always choose joy above anything else. Choose it at first consciously, like a child learns how to put on the right shoe on the right foot, with deliberate effort and focus. Push against the weight of a world heavy with reasons for sorrow, restless with need for action, desperate for validation. Feel the sorrow, ignore the need for validation, take the action if necessary. But keep pressing the weight of joy against it all with the armour of Self-knowledge and karma yoga, until the impulse becomes automated, like gravity. Until joy becomes natural and spontaneous like the inner laws of nature. Choose joy until you know you are not the chooser. You are it.
Joy is not a function of a life free of friction and frustration, but of Self-knowledge. Knowing this reorientates our personal focus. It allows an inner elevation by the fulcrum of appropriate action based on respecting the natural laws of life, knowing I am not in charge of results. Only the field of Existence is in charge, however I define it. So often choosing joy is a matter of attending to “the little joys”, those slender threads with which we weave the life we live. Don’t wait, wake up. You will never be any happier than you are right now. Don’t allow the tapestry of your life to be one of regret, or dissatisfaction. When we trust the universe or God to always take care of us, we know that everything we truly need is always given to us.
19. Comparison and envy destroy the soul. As the Self, we are all the same – there is only one without a second. To be Consciousness is ordinary because it is all there is, and we are all it. As a person, you are unique in all the world. There will never be another exactly like you. No matter what, never compare yourself to anyone, unless they truly are role models you desire to imitate to improve yourself. Don’t shame yourself for having them, but stamp on negative emotions like comparison and envy, a marquee advertising your low self-esteem. Or jealousy and possessiveness, which are a neon banner flashing your fear of abandonment.
Inquire into why these emotions appear, but keep negative thoughts and reactions private. Life is impersonal and indifferent to your feelings. Nobody can fix you or your problems, and everyone has their own to deal with. Work out your issues with reference to Self-knowledge. If you must, only share deeply personal feelings with people you trust, and who can receive them without feeling dumped on. Since everyone has their own demons to face, and others may take things personally, it’s wise not to express negativity. It takes a long time to be the person you desire to be. Time is short. But to be the Self takes no time at all, only the right knowledge – which is knowledge that never changes and is always good, Self-knowledge.
20. Forgive. Forgiveness, like gratitude, benefits you the most. It is not about the other, or pardoning adharmic things done to you. Sometimes we need to hold people accountable. All the same, forgiveness is really about freedom from bondage to the other, and of hurt and negativity in us. In any bond of depth and significance, hurt will happen and forgiveness will be necessary. Even the best or closest people to us can hurt us deeply, and we will have to forgive them for our own sake, even when trust is permanently broken and relationships end.
Remember that everything happens for a reason and contains a gift. The richest relationships, including the one we have with ourselves, are like lifeboats. But they are also submarines that descend to the darkest and most disturbing places of the human mind, the places we are most afraid to venture, the unfathomed depths of the soul where the light of love has never reached. Where our deepest shame and vulnerabilities live, where we don’t want to look or be seen because we fear we are much less than we would like to be.
Hurt takes us there. With Self-knowledge, we can understand all of this, resolve it, and find the courage to love anyway. We know nobody makes themselves the way they are by conscious choice. We are all products of those three energies that make up everything in life, sattva, rajas and tamas, and they do not come from us but the field of existence. No person is ever perfect, can be or needs to be. Self-knowledge transforms everything, even the most depraved and unloved parts of us, into gold. In this way we can be thankful for our fate, and embrace it.
When we can apply Self-knowledge to all our hurt and unloved parts, it is the alchemy by which shame transforms into the honour and privilege of accepting ourselves as we are, and/or of being invited into another’s darkness and having them witness our own with the unlimited light of love, of sympathy, of nonjudgmental understanding and compassion. Self-knowledge is the engine of buoyancy that keeps the submarine rising again and again toward the light, so that it may become the lifeboat that saves us. And one day, there are no more unknown depths to fear and no need for the lifeboat.
21. Don’t just resist cynicism — fight it actively. Cynicism is a callous on the soul, the defensive shield that forms around the most hurt parts of ourselves, what I call the Durodhyana factor. It usually manifests as being too hard, but being too nice can be as much of a defence mechanism in disguise. Cynicism will dissolve in the solvent of Self-knowledge, but it takes courage to ‘go there’. Fight it in yourself, for this unloved, unloving and soul-destroying tendency lies dormant in each of us, waiting to pounce. Counter it in those you love and engage with by modelling its opposite, authentic open-hearted, sincerity and transparency. Cynicism is often used to protect and injure hiding behind sarcasm and acerbic ‘humor’. It also masquerades as nobler faculties and dispositions, such as being ‘clever’, mysterious or unavailable. But it is never funny or clever, just purely fear-based and infinitely inferior.
It is a contracting, inherently uncreative and spiritually corrosive binding tendency. Life, like the universe itself, tolerates no stasis. In the absence of growth, decay usurps the order. If cynicism gets in, it will steal your soul leaving you craven and empty. Like all forms of destruction, it is infinitely easier and lazier than construction. But there is nothing more gratifying and nobler than living with transparent sincerity, acting from a place of loving, honest, rational faith in yourself, and the human spirit. Bend always toward empathy and compassion instead of taking the cowards easy route and caving to negativity.
22. Give up your precious judgments. Value instead astute impersonal knowledge-based observation. Remember that the arrow of karma once unleashed will always find its target. With the same severity you judge situations or others, you too will be judged. And what you condemn, you will one day become.
23. Honour true friends as you do the most precious gifts of life. True friendship is an act of recognition and belonging which cuts across all convention, morality, space and time. You are joined in an ancient and eternal way that knows no boundaries or barriers. There are no limitations of space on or for the soul. The soul is the divine light that flows from you and into the Other – who is not other but YOU, the nondual Self. This art of belonging awakens and fosters the deepest companionship, the best there is, with no power struggles, no need to control, only gentle, but fearless transparency. That we can bless each other in this way, yet it happens so rarely, is both a great miracle and a great tragedy, for there is no loneliness like the loneliness of having our light unknown and unseen, especially by ourselves.
True friendship is to surrender to the fierce tenderness of your own Being. The great Irish poet, John O’Donohue says: ‘In this love, you are understood as you are without mask or pretension. The superficial and functional lies and half-truths of social acquaintance fall away, you can be as you really are. Love allows understanding to dawn, and understanding is precious. Where you are understood, you are at home. Understanding nourishes belonging. When you really feel understood, you feel free to release yourself into the trust and shelter of the other person’s soul, which is in fact, your own soul”.
Sometimes friends change and if we allow for this, we don’t have to change our friends. But sometimes the friendships we think have turn out to be other than what we thought they were, and this can hurt. Trust can be irrevocably broken very easily. Love them as the Self they are anyway, but don’t waste energy on people who are not truly honest and open to you or to themselves. Don’t bother making time for people who don’t have time for you. As important as friendships are, we are not in life to make friends. We are here to love as the Self loves, without dependence, exception, judgement or withholding.
24. Expect anything worthwhile to take a long time. There are no shortcuts to anything of true value, especially freedom. The myth of overnight success is just that — a myth — as well as a reminder that our societies’ definition of success is deeply flawed. The flower doesn’t go from bud to blossom in one spritely burst. And yet, as a culture, we’re disinterested in the tedium of the blossoming. But that’s where all the real magic unfolds in the making of one’s character and destiny. It’s not always fun to allow for growth, but remind yourself that no growth happens without discomfort. And besides, comfort zones are seriously overrated.
25. Love is presence and paying attention. Pay attention to everyone, especially those you love most dearly. It takes so little to show you care, and it means so much when you don’t. Presence is far more valuable and rewarding than productivity. Yet ours is a culture that measures our worth as human beings by our efficiency, our earnings, how ‘good’ we are at something or our ability to perform this or that. The cult of productivity, skill and efficiency has its place, but constantly worshipping at its altar, instead of at the altar of karma yoga, robs us of the very capacity for joy and wonder that makes life worthwhile. The existential burden of doership exhausts the soul, even when we do get what we work so hard for. Never let the endless toil to achieve success hide its desolation and emptiness from you. Remember the inconvertible truth that how we spend our days is how we spend our lives. There is nothing more important than love, and love requires your presence and your attention.
26. Identify at all times with your true eternal essence. When people tell you who they are, honour their truth, even if you know their true identity is not the person they think they are, and as that, they may be more or less than they believe themselves to be. Just as important, however, when people try to tell you who you are, don’t believe them, unless they are reminding you that your true nature is the unborn unlimited Self. As a person, you are the only custodian of your integrity, and the assumptions made by those that misunderstand who you are and what you stand for reveal a great deal about them and absolutely nothing about you. No matter what, you are never not the unborn Self.
27. Take care of your inner stillness and your body. Build pockets of stillness into your life. Meditate. Go for walks. Watch clouds move across the sky. There is a creative purpose to doing nothing, even to boredom. Be as religious and disciplined about your sleep as you are about your work. Respect and take care of your body with healthy food and enough exercise. What could possibly be more important than your health and your sanity, without which peace of mind is impossible?
28. Trust life. Be generous in every way, with all your resources, but especially with your attention and your time. Be generous with your words, especially in giving credit. It’s so much easier to be a critic than a celebrator. Always remember there is a human being on the other end of every exchange or object being critiqued. All egos are very fragile things. To understand and be understood, those are among life’s greatest gifts, and every interaction is an opportunity to exchange them.
29. Never chase validation in any form. As the nondual Self, you are the measure of value for everything. Never do anything for prestige or status or money or approval as your main motivation. As a person, grow up, show up, do your best no matter the situation. Leave the rest to God. Whatever you do, do it because it makes you happy, even the drudgery of daily life, and the duties you don’t enjoy but have to do. Do everything in the spirit and grace of service and karma yoga. Give up the ludicrous idea of prestige. Nobody is special and everybody is special.
30. Take it easy. Tolerate. Practice Kindness. Nothing is ever as serious as we think it is. Everyone is made a certain way, due to many factors. Without normalizing adharmic behaviour, allow for wiggle room because no-one is perfect. Always make room for kindness and tolerance. Be honest with yourself but ban self-debasement. To accept yourself or anyone else requires forbearance, tolerance, kindness and patience. Give up trying to control, everyone follows their nature. What use is control, anyway, what do you ever gain by it? Zero. Life may be a zero sum game, but that does not mean it cannot be great fun, especially when you know who you really are. Take a chill pill, as my daughter would say. Good advice!
Sundari
ShiningWorld.com
