The decision to make the present moment into your friend is the end of ego.

If you identify with a mental position, then if you are wrong, your mind-based sense of self is seriously threatened with annihilation. So you as the ego cannot afford to be wrong. To be wrong is to die. Wars have been fought over this, and countless relationships have broken down.

Focus attention on the feeling inside you. Know that it is the pain-body. Accept that it is there. Don't think about it - don't let the feeling turn into thinking. Don't judge or analyze. Don't make an identity for yourself out of it. Stay present, and continue to be the observer of what is happening inside you. Become aware not only of the emotional pain but also of "the one who observes," the silent watcher. This is the power of the Now, the power of your own conscious presence. Then see what happens.

Once you have had a glimpse of awareness or Presence, you know it firsthand. It is no longer just a concept in your mind.

Become an alchemist. Transmute base metal into gold, suffering into consciousness, disaster into enlightenment.

You are not separate from the whole. You are one with the sun, the earth, the air. You don’t have a life. You are life.

The more shared past there is in a relationship, the more present you need to be.