Use whatever challenge comes into your life as a kind of fuel for the flame of consciousness. That is done through surrender to what is. Some people may need more of that than others. If you choose presence in your daily life you may not need the drastic challenges.

A person dies, or something you had identified with completely is gone. Your home goes up in flames. There is extreme pain at first. But whenever a form dissolves, which is called "death," what remains is an opening into emptiness.

Give up defining yourself - to yourself or to others. You won't die. You will come to life.

◦"At the deepest level of Being, you are one with all that is

You simply have to surrender to the present moment. Be alert. Watch something in a state of alertness. Always, continuously, bring that into everyday life, not spirituality here and getting on with your life there.

Empathy with someone else's pain or lack and a desire to help need to be balanced with a deeper realization of the eternal nature of all life and the illusion of all pain. Then let your peace flow into whatever you do, and you will be working on the levels of effect and cause simultaneously.

Once you have identified with some form of negativity, you do not want to let it go, and on a deeply unconscious level, you do not want positive change. It would threaten your identity as a depressed, angry or hard-done by person. You will then ignore, deny or sabotage the positive in your life. This is a common phenomenon. It is also insane.