God Is in the Details: The joy in being present is in noticing the light reflecting off the water, the specks of dust floating in the sunlight, the contentment on your dog’s face, the way the folds of the curtain fall, the shadows cast by the rocks, the clouds changing shapes, the smell of leaves, the taste of butter on bread. There is infinite variety available in this moment to enjoy, if you notice, but you have to be willing to notice the small things—the details—because they are often what sets this moment apart from other moments. The egoic mind sees something it has seen hundreds of times, and it skips over the experience and substitutes thoughts for experience and misses experiencing it altogether, which is where the juiciness and aliveness of life is. The ego’s mental world is a dry one. It lacks connection with experience—with real sensory experience. The richness in being alive comes through our senses. And when you experience what is coming into your senses, you feel alive, and you feel the joy Essence feels in being alive. –From Embracing the Now

There are a lot of things in life we don’t have a choice about—our gender, our parents, the environment we grew up in, our level of intelligence, our looks, our personality traits, and all of the rest of our conditioning, or programming. We are a soul that is in whatever package we are in. And yet, we often feel as if we are supposed to be different or as if we could be different, when we can’t be any different than we are. As humans, we invest much of our time and emotional energy in wishing we were different and in trying to be different than we are. However, the only thing that needs to be different for us to be happy is to accept the human package we were given and not take it personally if it isn’t what we would like it to be. It isn’t our fault that we appear as we appear or that we tend to respond the way we respond or that we suffer about whatever we suffer about. Somehow, deep inside, we feel that we shouldn’t be the way we are and we shouldn’t be flawed.

Everyone has this same sense of being flawed. Part of being human is feeling flawed, imperfect, less than. Those feelings seem to come with the package! The only way out of this dilemma of feeling like we should be different than we are is not becoming more perfect, according to our ideas of perfection, although it is certainly fine to improve ourselves and become better human beings. We can’t escape these feelings of imperfection by trying to become more perfect because there is no end to what we feel needs fixing, especially since we can’t escape aging and our ultimate demise.

MP3 recordings of Gina Lake’s April intensive, which was held in Sedona, AZ are available now. This is a collection of MP3s of talks and dialogues about moving out of the ego and into Essence. Topics include: our dual nature, who you are, accepting whatever you are experiencing, bridges into the present moment, following your Heart, love and relationships, trusting life, and examining beliefs. 3.5 hours for $9.95.

Listen to a sample (11 minutes):

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To purchase, please visit: http://www.radicalhappiness.com/recordings

There are facts and there are stories we tell about facts: Fact: He was late. Story: He was late because he doesn’t care. Facts create feelings only when you turn them into a story. Fact: I have x dollars in my bank account. Story: I have only x dollars in my bank account, and that should be different, and I’m scared I won’t have enough (in the future). Stories create feelings, and feelings drive actions and determine how we feel about life, ourselves, and others and where we put our energy. The ego is the aspect of ourselves that spins facts into stories, that holds particular beliefs, opinions, self-images, judgments, and desires. It is the programmed and conditioned aspect of ourselves. All stories, beliefs, and self-images belong to the ego and create the ego’s version of reality and the false self. Meanwhile, something else is here living, breathing, moving through life in a different way. It uses facts and the intellect, but it moves according to deeper drives and intentions that relate to the role we came here to play within the Whole.