>    I am just returning from a 10 day vacation and notice that the reported news is bleak…still. Hurricanes, terrorists, a U.S. Senator lacking personal ethics and a national football player lacking common sense and respect for life. Pretty much the usual fare. How to cope with all this negativity and stress remains one of the most important questions of our time… so I’d like to share a possible method for dealing with it.
    Thousands of years ago Buddha suggested that our suffering originates from the mis-perception of who we really are and our resulting separation from all things when, in fact, separation does not exist. Judaism has an equally liberating thought passed down through its mystic tradition of Hasidism that says every word we speak creates movement in the world of matter. I think the blending of these two views of how we use our Consciousness provide an excellent pathway for “right” living in difficult times.
    According to Buddha, when we see a reflection in a mirror we forget that we are the mirror, not the reflection. Our tendency is to think we are the “stories” we repeat over and over about ourselves. “I am a lawyer”…”I am a mother”…”I can’t sleep at night”…”I’m not good at drawing”…”I gain weight easily”…”My work is boring”…”My brother and I can’t get along.”  These “stories” are how we define ourselves. Like the actress Marilyn Monroe, who lost who she really was to the character she created, we lose who we really are when we forget that all of our “stories” are just images passing in front of the mirror of our Consciousness. Who We Really Are is the Consciousness, not the images. The images are transitory. Consciousness is boundless and eternal.
    According to the Hasidic tradition, Rabbi Nachman said, “All thoughts of man are speaking movement, even when he does not know it.” So how and when we use our thoughts, and words…even the very words we choose to use, not only impacts our reality…they create it!
    Now if words create our world, and there is no separation, then what we say about ourselves and others forms the reality we personally live in but also forms the greater reality as well. 
    And if the stories we tell about ourselves and others are not who we are or who they are but simply transitory experiences passing in front of our collective Consciousness…then perhaps we need to think less, talk less and feel more.
    In both thought and speech, our ego has its greatest power. Ego is nourished by separation. It’s sustenance is derived from self-importance. When we move out of our minds and into our hearts, our feeling centers, we are able to step outside of ourselves and our ego to connect with others through identification and compassion
    The “stories” that we are fed daily about natural disasters and terrorists and Senators and football players are just transitory images passing in front of the mirror of our Consciousness. Let’s not get frozen in those images and forget who we really are.
    Who We Really Are is a fragment of the whole spectrum of possibility that exists anew each and every second of existence.
    When you sit with that thought and really feel it…all those stories we tell, and are told, get really small.

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