Your unhappiness ultimately arises not from the circumstances of your life but from the conditioning of your mind.

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.

On the surface it seems that the present moment is only one of many, many moments. Each day of your life appears to consist of thousands of moments where different things happen. Yet if you look more deeply, is there not only one moment, ever? Is life ever not this moment? This one moment, now, is the only thing you can never escape from. The one constant factor in your life. No matter what happens. No matter how much your life changes. One thing is certain. Its always now. Since there is no escape from the now, why not welcome it, become friendly with it.

If there were nothing but thought in you, you wouldn't even know you are thinking. You would be like a dreamer who doesn't know he is dreaming. When you know you are dreaming, you are awake within the dream.

When you take your attention into the present moment, a certain alertness arises. You become more conscious of what's around you, but also, strangely, a sense of presence that is both within and without.

You all know the saying which is very true: What you resist persists. And I'm sure many of you have already found that out in your life. And then suddenly when you let go of resistance you let go of an attachment to something: I need this to happen in order to be happy; I don't want what is, I want something else. To be okay with what is, which is the simplicity of this moment, is the beginning of true change.

Whenever you are engaged in something and there is an outpouring of energy, you are in enthusiasm.