It is natural that our minds replay old stories, because that is our own mechanism for trying to work out unresolved problems. Yet rerunning those stories will be a fruitless looping until we learn how to move from the story into our body. This is why therapy alone often doesn't bring full healing and awakening.

Meditation helps us gain the capacity to relax, to connect with what is going on right here and right now, to connect with other people, to re-access our resourcefulness, our clarity and our ability to focus and keep an open heart.

I would say both Western psychology and Eastern paths would recognize that we get caught up in feeling like a separate self and an unworthy self.

I think of depression as the mechanism that pushes down the pain of that loss. It tries to distance us from the loss but it lowers our whole energy level. I think that's a pervasive way we end up responding to loss or the anticipation of loss. Natural but not necessary.

If there's a demand of being together in a certain way, those expectations and judgements take away from that space and create an edginess and a cramped-ness to the relationship.

In the process of deeply accepting our own inner experience, instead of being identified with a story of a limited self, we realize the compassion and wakefulness that is our essence.

Just remember that everyone is struggling; everyone is living with fear and uncertainty and it doesn't matter what their politics are.