*image by Ben Harubin

Come on -- you're old enough -- time to face it.
Contrary to some past opinions, here are the facts.
The cause of all suffering is criticism.
That's right, you heard correctly -- criticism!
Now get on with your life.

When one man heard a mystic say that thinking only effects thinking and
nothing else, he brought up examples wherein men's thinking had apparently
effected not just their thinking but their actions as well.
To which the mystic replied, "I wasn't speaking of idiots."

A boy asked his sister, "You know why the truth sounds so abrupt?"
And she replied, "It only seems so if you take what was said, to be the truth."
And he pondered this for a moment, then said, "Okay, then if it is not 'the truth'
that is the distinguishing factor in the abrupt statements to which I was alluding,
then why do certain blunt, abrupt ones strike us as being unusually meaningful?"
And she replied, "Speak for yourself."
And he was starkly shocked to suddenly realize that someone in his own family
had come to an understanding of the nature of the mind.

It has been said that first you must realize what life is actually about,
then you begin the struggle to realize it constantly.
(And this cannot be done the other way around, regardless of how it
may seem it should.)

Only ignorant people take life personally -- and only ignorant people take
anything said about them personally.

The mind is the only physician who can diagnose himself...without being
there...and with no patient present.
(Then small wonder the brilliance of his conclusions!)

That extraordinary state of "enlightenment"
only becomes permanently useful when
it ceases to be all that extraordinary.

Ask yourself this:
What major distinction is there really between your routine,
sleepy state of consciousness and the times you believe it to be
even worse? Huh-h-h?

Remember the wisdom of your proverbs:
"Close" only counts in basketball...and in hangings.