Question: When things don’t work out in my life — when I lose someone or something — I am plagued by thoughts over what could have/should have been. How do I pull myself out of this obsessive thinking about what I once had?

Answer: The sense of self that any suffering produces is guaranteed to find ways to continue that same suffering. Try to see when these sad thoughts come to you and invite you into their world that they always promise you something. Connect the pain that follows your entrance into their world with their presence, and eventually you will see through these lies. To help you refuse this insidious invitation, ask yourself repeatedly: What good is anything I may possess that when I no longer have it, I no longer have myself? Stay with this question (and its intent) until something in you awakens that wants its own life more than the false life provided for it through temporary conditions.

Question: My greatest weaknesses are my obsessive negativity and dramatic mood swings. I literally feel the pressure of my moods bringing me down. It is a physical force and it is painful. It wears me down and it infects my family. How do I disengage from this painful involuntary physical response to the negative images that occur in my mind?

Answer: These negative and dark pressures that are dragging you down have drawn you into a fight with them that by the very fact of that fight you have lost. Here’s how to “win” this spiritual battle: Imagine a house with its front door open and back door as well. Treat every passing negative feeling like a wind that enters and exits at the same moment. This can be done. The way in which these negative forces trick us into believing that they have not left when we bring them into our open awareness this way is that they simply flood back in or engage a part of our mind whose interest is in the revisitation of these devitalizing forces. Just keep coming awake and letting things go. They will tire and eventually seek more fertile ground. Be assured.