In most of our human relationships, we spend much of our time reassuring one another that our costumes of identity are on straight.

Suffering is the sandpaper of our incarnation. It does its work of shaping us.

A Tibetan Lama said to me, "The best place to stand, Ram Dass, is halfway between hope and hopelessness." So I can write a scenario for the 21st century in either direction. One is that it all goes to hell and that it's truly the dark age.

Now is now. Are you going to be here or not?

What we're seeing "out there" is the projection of where we're at--the projection of the clingings of our minds.

Finally you come to a point where you almost know it all. You are very wise. You are very pure... except for the fact that you may well have gotten caught in the last trap... the desire to know it all and still be you, "the knower." This is an impossibility. For all of the finite knowledge does not add up to the infinite. In order to take the final step, the knower must go. That is, you can only BE it all, but you can't know it all. The goal is non-dualistic - as long as there is a "knower" and "known" you are in dualism.

When you are completely identified with your thinking mind you are totally separate from everything else in the universe.