You find peace not by rearranging the circumstances of your life, but by realizing who you are at the deepest level.

In the unawakened state you don't use thought, but thought uses you. You are, one could almost say, possessed by thought, which is the collective conditioning of the human mind that goes back many thousands of years. You don't see anything as it is, but distorted and reduced by mental labels, concepts, judgments, opinions and reactive patterns.

Even if you achieve your outer purpose, it will never satisfy you if you haven't found your inner purpose, which is awakening, being present, being in alignment with life. True power comes out of the presence; it is the presence.

If you keep your attention in the body as much as possible, you will be anchored in the Now. You won't lose yourself in the external world, and you won't lose yourself in your mind. Thoughts and emotions, fears and desires may still be there to some extent, but they won't take you over.

For some people, it's the beginning of an awakening when they hear or read, "You have a voice in your head that never stops talking. Have you noticed that?" And suddenly they become aware that the thoughts go through their heads, whereas before they were so identified with them that they were those thoughts.

All it takes is a simple choice, a simple decision: no matter what happens, I will create no more pain for myself. I will create no more problems.

Do you really need to mentally label every sense perception and experience? Do you really need to have a reactive like/dislike relationship with life where you are in almost continuous conflict with situations and people? Or is that just a deep-seated mental habit that can be broken? Not by doing anything, but by allowing this moment to be as it is.