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.

Even if they don't know it consciously, people can feel when you are making them into a means to an end only. And people are much less likely to do what you want them to do - for example, to buy the car - when they feel you are reducing them into a means to an end.

Work to recognize the primary importance of the present moment.

So the single most vital step on your journey towards enlightenment is this: learn to disidentify from your mind.

Hang on to the inner body, let it be the anchor, then you're present. If they say something challenging and you lose it again, pause, and anchor again. Practice, practice, continuous practice-becaus e when you're in touch with the inner body, spaciousness arises.

Be at least as interested in what goes on inside you as what happens outside. If you get the inside right, the outside will fall into place.

A huge number of people are going through the process of awakening, some in the early stages, some in later stages, and it's wonderful to see.