is right on this topic. He says the first thing you need to do is get in touch with negative feelings you're not even aware of. Lots of people have negative feelings. They're not aware of lots of people are depressed, and they're not aware they are depressed. It's only when they make contact with joy that they understand how depressed they were. Can't deal with the cancer that you haven't detected. You can't get rid of boll weevils on your farm if you're not aware of their existence, the first thing you need is awareness of your negative feelings. What negative feelings? Gloominess, for instance, you're feeling gloomy and moody. You feel self hatred or guilt. Feel that life is pointless, that it makes no sense. You've got hurt feelings. You're feeling nervous and tense. Get in touch with these feelings first. The second step is to understand that the feeling is in you, not in reality, such a self evident thing. But do you think people know it? They don't believe me. They've got PhDs and our presidents of universities, and they haven't understood this. They didn't teach me how to live at school. They taught me everything else. As one man said, I got a pretty good education. Took me years to get over it. That's what spirituality is all about. You know, unlearning, unlearning, all the rubbish they taught you. Of course, you're not taught didactically. It's just in the air, in the water. Everybody feels this way. Negative feelings are in you, not in reality. So stop trying to change reality. That's crazy. Stop trying to change the other. Person. We spend all our time and energy trying to change external circumstances, trying to change our spouses, our bosses, our friends, our enemies and everybody else. We don't have to change anything negative feelings are in you. No person on earth has the power to make you unhappy. There is no event on Earth that has the power to disturb you or hurt you, no event, condition, situation or person. Nobody told you this. They told you the opposite. It's why you're in the mess that you're in now. It's why you're asleep. They never told you this, but it's self evident. Let's suppose that rain washes out a picnic. Who's feeling negative the rain? Or you, what's causing the negative feeling the rain, or your reaction when you bump your knee against a table. The table is fine. It's busy, busy being what it was made to be a table. Pain is in your knee, not in the table. Mystics keep trying to tell us that reality is all right. Reality is not problematic. Problems exist only in the human mind. Might add in the stupid, sleeping human mind. Reality is not problematic. Take away human beings from this planet and life would go on. Nature would go on in all its loveliness and violence, where would be the problem? No problem. You created. The problem you are. The problem you identified with me, and that is the problem feeling is in you, not in reality. Third step. Never identify with that feeling. It has nothing to do with I. He makes this distinction between me and I. People are probably familiar with that. Me is our conditioned self. I is our nature. True Nature, our awareness. Don't define your essential self in terms of that feeling. Don't say I am depressed. If you want to say it is depressed, that's all right. If you want to say depression is there, that's fine. If you want to say gloominess is there, that's fine. But not I am gloomy. You're defining yourself in terms of the feeling. That's your illusion, your mistake. There is depression right there now, there are hurt feelings right there now, but let it be. Leave it alone. It will pass. Everything passes. Everything. Your depressions and your thrills have nothing to do with happiness. Those are swings of the pendulum. Do you want to see kicks or thrills? Get ready for depression. Do you want your drug get ready for the hangover. One end of the pendulum swings to the other. This has nothing to do with I. It has nothing to do with happiness. It is the me. If you remember this, if you say it to yourself 1000 times. You try these three steps 1000 times, you will get it. You will not need to do it even three times. You might not need to do it even three times. I don't know, there's no rule for it, but do it 1000 times, you'll make the biggest discovery in your life, so easy to see it, to accept it. Problem is our reactivity, but then we forget, just fall back asleep, live a life of reactivity directed by all the patterns we've laid down. So I say Sheen is such a wonderful thing. Opportunity to break through that chip away bit by bit, to see it, have it brought up for us, it's the rare person that doesn't struggle with negative feelings in seshin. The