The ego's form of happiness can't exist without unhappiness. The ego will be happy when something good happens but unhappy when it ends.

Instead of being lost in your thinking, when you awaken you recognize yourself as the awareness behind it. Thinking then ceases to be a self-serving autonomous activity that takes possession of you and runs your life.

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.

An amazing realization is in the present moment there is only what is, but there are no problems. And if your attention remains in the Now, you no longer inhabit a world of problems. Challenges you may still face, but they come to you in the space of Now.

The most rigid structures, the most impervious to change, will collapse first.

I don't pray for anything, but I have used affirmations in the past a few times. They are really a bit more like realizations in that on some level they have already happened.

The story of the Zen Master whose only response was always "Is that so?" shows the good that comes through inner nonresistance to events, that is to say, being at one with what happens. The story of the man whose comment was invariably a laconic "Maybe" illustrates the wisdom of nonjudgment, and the story of the ring points to the fact of impermanence which, when recognized, leads to nonattachment. Nonresistance, nonjudgement, and nonattachment are the three aspects of true freedom and enlightened living.