The thinking mind can be so noisy that it cannot relate to stillness. It doesn't even recognize it and certainly can't remember it.

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.

Choice implies consciousness - a high degree of consciousness. Without it, you have no choice. Choice begins the moment you disidentify from the mind and its conditioned patterns, the moment you become present....Nobody chooses dysfunction, conflict, pain. Nobody chooses insanity. They happen because there is not enough presence in you to dissolve the past, not enough light to dispel the darkness. You are not fully here. You have not quite woken up yet. In the meantime, the conditioned mind is running your life.

Practice presence -- embrace the place where life happens.

Some form of suffering often brings about a readiness. One can say it cracks open the shell of the egoic mind with which many people identify as "me." Life cracks open that shell, and once that crack is there, then we are reached more easily by spiritual teaching.

It is important to realize that a large percentage of what we hear or see on the news focuses on those places where there is violent conflict...It gives us a slightly or very distorted view of what is going on because there are many other parts of the planet where there is no violent conflict, but that is not on the news.

Go within. Use the inner body as a starting point for going deeper and taking your attention away from where it's usually lodged, in the thinking mind.