When one child says to another, "I can do this, I bet you can't"; "My dad has a bigger car than yours"; or, "My dad is stronger than yours." Children identify with this or that, trying to build up a sense of self - a mentally defined sense of self.

To be identified with your mind is to be trapped in time: the compulsion to live almost exclusively through memory and anticipation.

It wasn't through the mind, through thinking, that the miracle that is life on earth or your body were created and are being sustained.

And then there is the universal role of adult. When you play that role, you take yourself and life very seriously. Spontaneity, lightheartedness, and joy are not part of that role.

A practice can be helpful, but didn't the Buddha compare it to a raft, suggesting it be abandoned when you reach the other shore?

If there isn't an emanation of love and joy, complete presence and openness toward all beings, then it is not enlightenment.

For what you do to others, you do to yourself.