Globally we are at this moment of diagnosis on the planet. We are standing in front of the doctor and they are telling us we are entering the sixth mass extinction. The shock of this has the potential to have humanity dig deeper than imagined and write a completely new program, unleashing a rapid healing response across the globe.

For some years in California, a young man came to my lectures in a bed, brought in a bed. He was a quadriplegic. He could not speak. He was about twenty-eight years old. He was like this (laying back on a slant). His attendant could hold his hand over an alphabet board and there was just enough capacity to point at letters. That was the way he spoke. Each time he came, I went over to him and hugged him, and then I would wait while he spelled out some words. I felt in myself how reactive I was to the immensity of his deprivation state.

When you look back at your own life, you see that with the suffering you went through, you would have avoided it each time if you possibly could, yet when you look at the depths of your character now, and the fact that you’re sitting here doing this work, you see it’s all a product of those experiences.

I remember when I was on a book tour for Radical Acceptance, one of the places I stopped was the Buddhist university, Naropa, and they had a big poster with a big picture of me and, underneath the photo, the caption was: Something is wrong with me.

You are a sovereign being. You are the only governing authority when it comes to your life. The moment you choose to let go of blaming others is the moment you take possession of the key to your own shackles.

I often quote the psychologist Carl Rogers, who said, “It wasn’t until I accepted myself, just as I was, that I was free to change.” In other words, this acceptance — this recognizing what’s going on inside us and this deep unconditional tenderness — is the prerequisite to change.

I recently heard about a man who attempted to sneak his pet turtle onto a flight by placing it between two buns and wrapping it in a KFC wrapper. When he was discovered, he told the officials that he just couldn’t leave his beloved pet at home.

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.

There comes a time in our lives where we make a decision. Sometimes it’s a conscious choice and sometimes it stems from an experience that we can no longer deny. Either way, we arrive at a point in our lives where we know or feel that it is time to move forward.

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.

We are living through adversarial times in this country. People want to blame others for whatever they believe is wrong with their own lives. Immigrants, gay people, outspoken women—choose one or all of the above, and you have an instant “enemy.” It’s a behavioral pattern that can be traced back through centuries of human relationships on this planet.