Negativity is often based on frustration, but frustration itself can be transmuted.

The key is whether mind and breath are functioning properly.

When breath is not balanced, many thoughts and concepts arise, and this leads directly to frustration and negativity.

So it is very important to become conscious of the breath. 

Footsteps on the Diamond Path Volume I-III.

We need to look closely to what we are doing and ask whether our actions are likely to bring us the satisfaction we seek.

Are our attitudes and personal philosophies in harmony with what we really want?

Knowledge of Freedom

Fear can be a gateway to inner awakening. 

Whenever we taste fear, we can suspect that we are close to knowledge that we have hidden from ourselves.

Whenever we approach the boundaries of our experience and begin to perceive something new, fear will also arise like a shadow concealing what we most need to know. 

Like a good friend, fear will never leave us until we completely understand our own being. 

As long as we seek greater knowledge of who and what we are, we can trust fear to serve as a compass to our own awareness, a pointer showing us the way to greater knowledge.

Knowledge of Freedom

Encourage any thoughts, prayers, or devotions that are powerful and good, that take you beyond the conceptual, for they will have a continuing positive impact.

You yourselves may need to be the ones to create these positive impressions.

Let your actions and your love lay down the footprints that show others the path to follow. 

Creative Journey 

As we allow a deep caring to permeate all of our actions,

we realize the humble heart is the greatest heart of all.

Skillful Means

Encouragements, discouragements, neutral observations—all these messages may only be meaningless mind chatter, stirred up on the surface of mind by tension or anxiety.

None of them, not even the interpretations and commentaries, can touch the inner essence of relaxation and invite the joy of experience to come out.

They have nothing to do with relaxation or mediation; they cannot engage meditation directly, so they cannot analyze and judge the quality of your concentration.

There is no need to respond to them follow their dialogues, or reflect on their significance.

It is not important whether you are confused or not confused, or whether you have thoughts.

As much as possible, let this entire stream of mental activity flow by without paying it any attention.

Relax deeply; allow the body to be still and the mind to calm down.

Then your senses can operate more clearly, and the feeling-tone can come out.

Once you become familiar with how this works, you can tune in more closely to the field of perception itself. 

Joy of Being

We can transmute negative feelings into positive, balanced feelings.

This does not mean just trying to be happy, because happiness is not necessarily balanced.

The feeling of balance is something quite different. 

Footsteps on the Diamond Path Volume I-III

When laziness, weakness, excuses, or rationalizations are constantly repeated within the mind, they generate a kind of callousness or frigidity and a feeling of avoiding something ‘terrible’.

What are you avoiding is not terrible.

Even fear can be used to awaken, recognize, change and relieve the tension.

But you must do something yourself and not expect someone else to do it for you.

Ask yourself, how much are you learning from this experience?

How much can others help you?

It is absolutely essential that you risk taking responsibility for yourself.

You need to grow and develop for your own sake, so you must deal directly with yourself. 

Crystal Mirror IV

Once we clearly recognize that our expectations lead only to disappointment and frustration, constant grasping no longer binds us, and we become more open to our experiences.

We can find satisfaction anywhere—a simple walk may give more pleasure than any other entertainment.

But until we open our hearts, there is little inspiration, inner light, or warmth to sustain us, for we constantly undermine ourselves.

Ultimately no one can really help us unless we take the first step, listen to ourselves, encourage ourselves, and give ourselves confidence by taking refuge in our hearts.

Once our hearts are open, all existence appears naturally beautiful and harmonious.

This is not just another fantasy—it is possible to see and feel this way, and this is the essence of the spiritual teachings.

The heart reveals all knowledge to us.

Why the heart and not the mind?

Because our egos control our heads, and our hearts are much more free. 

Tibetan Meditation 

Every single thought has a nucleus of energy, a center of power and awareness that we can easily find once we put aside the ideas of doing and achieving.

The energy in the center just opens.

This is being.

Being needs no improvements; it needs no doing or moving. Being is not past, not future, not even present.

Tibetan Mediation