Knowing yourself as the awareness behind the voice is freedom

1. The mind is a superb instrument if used rightly. Used wrongly, however, it becomes very destructive. To put it more accurately, it is not so much that you use your mind wrongly—you usually don't use it at all. It uses you.
    
2. Pleasure is always derived from something outside you, whereas joy arises from within.
    
3. The past has no power over the present moment.
    
4. You cannot find yourself by going into the past. You can find yourself by coming into the present.
    
5. Realize deeply that the present moment is all you have. Make the NOW the primary focus of your life.
    
6. Knowing yourself as the awareness behind the voice is freedom.
    
7. The most common ego identifications have to do with possessions, the work you do, social status and recognition, knowledge and education, physical appearance, special abilities, relationships, person and family history, belief systems, and often also political, nationalistic, racial, religious, and other collective identifications. None of these is you.
    
8. There is something that matters more than any of those things and that is finding the essence of who you are beyond that short-lived entity, that short-lived personalized sense of self.
    
9. You find peace not by rearranging the circumstances of your life, but by realizing who you are at the deepest level.
    
10. Trying to become a good or better human being sounds like a commendable and high-minded thing to do, yet it is an endeavor you cannot ultimately succeed in unless there is a shift in consciousness.
     
11. Some changes look negative on the surface but you will soon realize that space is being created in your life for something new to emerge.
     
12. Living up to an image that you have of yourself or that other people have of you is inauthentic living.