Your essential self is vast. it is pure consciousness, universal awareness, and it is the foundation of all expression, creativity, and expansion in this world. It is “you” in your most unadulterated form. You entered this world with this essential innocence and purity, but life’s events have distanced and covered over the core foundation of your being. You have forgotten the essential you.

When you forget, you do something very curious.You experience your mind thinking, your feelings arising, and your body functioning, and you conclude that those aspects of your experience are the totality of who you are. You say, “I’m fat,” “I’m depressed,” “I’m poor, broken, and hopeless,” “I’m angry,” or “I’m stupid,” as if you are the thought, feeling, situation, or body part.

Are you feeling frayed around the edges, like you’re not sure how much longer you can hold it all together? 

If so, you’re not alone!

A lot of us are starting to feel like we’re nearing the end of our rope. I mean, this has been going on for a long time now! The daily anxiety, the death counts, the news — it just seems to go on and on. 

Even those of us who started out really strong (or maybe just in denial!), and we thought, “This will be over soon…” Well, “soon” has come and gone and here we still are! Depending where you are in the world, you may not even have passed the peak yet, and you may be wondering how much more you can take.

The news wants to feed the Fear Virus and paint a picture of doom and gloom, and we have to counter it with signs of hope. Yes, there is devastation around us — I don’t want to ignore or downplay that. But I also want to remind you that there is a pattern here. And as hard as it is to believe, this too shall pass. 

Many people find it hard to move on when they lose a spouse or a partner. While some feel guilty, others think they’re cheating on the person who has passed. And then there are others who say they don’t deserve to be happy and choose to go through the rest of their life alone.

Those on the Other-Side don’t want us to linger in pain or be alone. They know that as humans, we need to touch and to be touched, to hold and be held, and above all that, we’re meant to love and to be loved. There’s never any judgment from them when it comes to affairs of the heart. When you feel you cannot get out of bed because of your sadness, it is them who gently push you forward.

To cope with the loss of your life partner, here’s the best advice I can give you: Your loved ones wouldn’t want you to suffer alone, so I recommend that you talk to someone about your feelings, be it a close friend or a professional therapist. It doesn’t help if you shut yourself off from those who were part of your life when you were a couple.

Do you remember when one of the big office supply stores developed the big red "Easy” button as a reminder to "keep things easy at work"? Years ago, one of my fellow staff members at The Ford Institute started bringing a big red "Easy" button to all of the in-person workshops and trainings we did. He would keep it out at the staff table at the back of the workshop room. It was actually a perfect reminder for all of us that an invitation for transformation exists in every moment and it can happen in an instant if we choose to open up and receive the invitation. Unfortunately, most people don't recognize the miracles that are always dancing right in front of them as well as their innate power and ability to shift what they are experiencing in each and every moment.

“I want. I want… I want…. It’s one of the most dangerous phrases you will ever speak.”~Jan

How can five letters hold such power?

I WANT has the immense and immediate ability to rip you away from the grace and power of the present moment while disconnecting you from the joy, passion, and peace that is your birthright.

In short, these two tiny words equal suffering. Let me show you how.

Two Tiny Words, An Immense Amount of Suffering

I wanted to be happy. I wanted to be smart. I wanted to be successful. I wanted financial independence. I wanted to have kids. Lots of them. And I wanted to be loved (for a while I thought by George Clooney!?!) Oh, and I also wanted to have long, thin, beautiful legs. Seriously, Gisele Bundchen legs!

I wanted it all, with all of passion and conviction I could muster.

But my wants remained loftily stubborn. Out of reach. In fact, for the majority of my life, the absence of checkmarks on my ‘want list’ (and my bitchier days, my ‘deserve list’) made me firmly believe that life was against me.

I was a classic victim, sure that I had an oversized bullseye on my back. My life, I felt, was downright unfair, so I took every opportunity to remind the universe of this fact.

All because my wants weren’t showing up.

Most people get depressed at times, and many suffer greatly from bouts of major depression. At the heart of the suffering is the experience of severed belonging—of being imprisoned in the pain of separation, unworthiness, unlovability and hopelessness. These two talks explore several meditation practices that reconnect us with our natural aliveness, open heartedness and awareness. They empower us to develop our inner resources, energize us to awaken, free us from rumination and remind us that we are not our depressive thoughts and feelings. The growing realization of the loving awareness that is our home heals the very roots of depression.

As a psychologist and a psychotherapist, I could see that each of us would get our minds into a certain place, our thought processing into a certain place where we would tend to see life, day by day, in a very repetitive fashion, and with a set of habits and thought that we were incapable of breaking through.

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about the inevitable “aging and decaying process.”

I witness my own body and mind as I struggle with various aches, pains and wrinkles, as well as that of my friends and family.