When you are not making the present moment into a means to an end, you also are not making every human being you meet - in your business and even at home, in your family - into a means to an end.

Every morning we awaken from sleep and from our dreams and enter the state we call wakefulness. A continuous stream of thoughts, most of them repetitive, characterizes the normal wakeful state.

You can't think about presence, and the mind can't understand it. Understanding presence is being present.

The whole movement of happiness, unhappiness, happiness, unhappiness, could be called unhappiness. You're suffering because your state of mind is in flux, moving back and forth. The ego's happiness is really a form of suffering, because it cannot live without unhappiness.

Many people see themselves as a problem that needs to be solved. They also habitually see the present moment as an obstacle that they need to overcome or get away from. With awareness, an inner sense of spaciousness arises that enables you to look at your own mind, which is to say the human mind, with a certain degree of detachment.

Your unhappiness ultimately arises not from the circumstances of your life but from the conditioning of your mind.

Instead of making up stories, stay with the facts. For example, "I am ruined" is a story. It limits you and prevents you from taking effective action. "I have 50 cents left in my bank account" is a fact.