When his company had a corner on the automobile market, Henry Ford once said, "Americans can have any color car they want, as long as it is black." As a result of this stubborn philosophy, within a very few short years, Ford lost his hold over the auto industry, until his company was willing to come into alignment with the changing needs of people. In the 1950's, Ford introduced the Edsel as a medium-priced alternative between the inexpensive Ford and the more costly Mercury. The Edsel, as we know now, was a major financial disaster. Yet out of the Edsel fiasco, the Ford researchers discovered a new market: Americans were no longer merely buying cars based on price— the cars had to fit certain lifestyle changes and aspirations. So out of the failed Edsel experiment, Ford developed the Thunderbird to appeal to an emerging American sports car consciousness. And the Thunderbird was one of the greatest successes in the auto industry. When we are open to learning through our apparent mistakes, we discover that the mistakes themselves can be the stepping stones to our success in life. 

We often wait to give gifts to someone until it is his or her birthday or some special holiday like Christmas or Hanukkah. But this takes much of the surprise out of our gift-giving; it makes it too predictable. The real joy in giving and receiving gifts is in the unexpected. When, for no reason, we give a gift to a friend, just because we feel like giving him something special, there is a great gladness in being so unpredictably generous and open and loving. Perhaps we can also give ourselves more in our life in this open and generous and spontaneous way. Maybe we can begin by just picking someone who is special to us and give him an unexpected gift just because we want him to know how important he is to us. So give, even if it's not his or her birthday; give unexpectedly and see the joy you create. 

There's a Zen saying, "Those who come are not to be refused; those who leave are not to be pursued," meaning that we can relax and allow the comings and goings of the people and situations in our lives to happen without struggle, strain or anxiety. Sometimes we are exhausting ourselves trying to make something or someone stay who is ready to leave or trying to make something or someone leave who wants to stay. Our lives become very simple and filled with ease when we decide to follow the way of not resisting or letting things come and go. The seasons come and go in orderly sequence and progression. This is the way of nature. We can't argue and say summer mustn't leave and fall mustn't come, and fall mustn't leave and winter mustn't come. What we can do is relax and appreciate the beauty of each season as it comes and release it in gladness as it goes, knowing that another beauty awaits us. 

When we are traveling on an airline, we are familiar with the flight attendant's instructions: "If the cabin pressure changes, an oxygen mask will drop from the overhead bin. If you are travelling with a small child, first put on your mask before you put the mask on the child." If we stop to think about these instructions, we realize a profound spiritual truth: first we need to get ourselves together before we can be of much help to the others in our lives. Yet we have the tendency to want to 'fix' the people in our lives first, and then we'll get around to getting ourselves clear and free. We live in relationship to help us to see our own spiritual blemishes, not to point out the spiritual faults of another. Buddha said, "Work out your salvation with diligence"— not somebody else's. 

Sometimes even our deepest relationships in life change. People we thought we would be with forever are suddenly gone for one reason or another. This is a very challenging time, when someone we were close to is leaving or has left our life. Sometimes we feel as if we ourselves are being lost. Our emotional connections to people we are close to are so strong that we almost feel as if we are losing our own center deep inside when they leave our life. It is helpful during these trying times to remember that there is more to us than any relationship in life. We each have within us the capacity to deal with any relationship or situation that comes our way. People don't always stay with us, and one of the great gifts of maturity is in learning to be with ourselves and learning to befriend ourselves as people come and go in our lives. The self that each of us is has all the strength and courage it needs to go forward in this life regardless of circumstances. 

Thomas Lux once said, "Friend, please forgive me for dying so little today." Sometimes we outlive ourselves by carrying yesterday's thoughts and feelings into today. If we carry too many yesterdays with us, we may find ourselves missing too much of today. Like the lady in Dickens' Great Expectations, we might find ourselves in a shuttered room full of memories living out of our past. To find ourselves alive and fully real right now, we can die to yesterday's pains and pleasures, to all that we were in the past. Dying daily to the past is to come alive and feel vital, fulfilled and ever-new. It is particularly helpful to forgive and release old memories of pain, hurt and sorrow; we really don't have to be who we were then any longer. No one keeps us in the past but ourselves; no one can open the door to living now but ourselves. Choosing to be fully present in this live gives us tremendous energy to go forward into newness and joy. 

There is a wonderful story told of the legendary Zen Master Bodhidharma who is said to have brought Zen to China from India. The legend has it that one time Bodhidharma fell asleep in meditation, and when he awoke, he was so angry with himself that he cut off his eyelashes as a reminder to himself to stay awake in meditation. The story goes on that Bodhidharma's eyelashes fell to the ground, took root and sprouted as tea plants. So when a Zen monk is tempted to fall asleep in meditation, he drinks tea— which is Bodhidharma's gift of wakefulness. It's interesting that even the great Bodhidharma got angry at himself for spiritual slackness. In fact, the great teachers of humanity have all acknowledged mistakes and shortcomings. Yet how hard we tend to be on ourselves for our frailties and mistakes! Perhaps we can be a little more gentle and tolerant of our own foibles when we stop and think of Bodhidharma's eyelashes. 

A customer was complaining about the shoes he had purchased in a store. After offering to refund his money or exchange the shoes to no avail, the salesman finally asked, "Well, what do you want?" The customer responded, "I just want to complain." Sometimes we feel that life has played us a dirty trick; people and circumstances have conspired to cause us disappointment, frustration and sorrow, and we are nursing our grievances against the way things are and have been for us. "It's unfair," we say. We haven't been treated right by this, that or the other. Yet we can rehearse the wrongs of life endlessly and never find peace of mind or freedom of heart. Forgiveness releases us from a too long festering wound of pain and grievance. With forgiveness comes real healing and new life. We forgive for our own healing sake. We've been wounded too long, and we need the healing. We don't have to carry our pain a moment longer. This moment right now we can forgive and experience our healing and our release. 

There's a Spanish proverb, "If I die, I forgive you. If I live, we shall see." Indeed, much of our forgiving tends to be conditional. Before we really forgive completely, we want to see how things will turn out. We'll forgive as long as they don't commit any further wrongs against us. We'll forgive if we win. We'll forgive if they lose. In other words, we are willing to forgive as long as we know the outcome and feel as if we have some control over the process. Yet the way of healing and transformation is through unconditional forgiveness, when we no longer need to know how it's all going to work out in order to forgive. We just forgive— that's all— regardless of what happened or will happen. Regardless of who's to blame. Hannah Arendt says that there is always an unexpected and foreseen good which comes from this kind of forgiveness. Because our forgiveness is unpremeditated and noncalculating, the results are always far beyond anything we can imagine and better. 

Forgiveness is really a process of healing and spiritual renewal. When our life does not seem to be working, when we feel stuck or out of sync with our world, when we aren't flourishing on some level or other— be it love relationships, family, finances, job, health or spiritual unfoldment— chances are: there is someone or something we need to forgive. People say, "Well, I've forgiven, but I just can't forget"— but that isn't real forgiveness. Or someone will say, "I have forgiven so-and-so; I just don't want to see him ever again." Again, that isn't forgiveness. We can disguise our lack of forgiveness in all sorts of subtle ways. We say to ourselves of those who hurt us: "I don't actually hate them anymore, I just don't wish them well." Whenever we feel a lack of positive good will or love towards someone who at some point wronged us, then we still need to have a forgiveness breakthrough with that person. We may ask, "How can I forgive?" The first step is acknowledging that we are still feeling the hurt or pain or anger. The second step comes with our willingness to forgive, when we begin to see the real need for forgiveness. Finally there is the forgiveness itself on a feeling or heart level. Then comes blessing, thanksgiving and finally release. We release ourselves and the other person to the Highest Good for all concerned. When we really forgive, we experience a profound healing and a new depth of personal harmony and joy in our lives. Sometimes, the only thing left to do in a situation in our life that won't get better, is to forgive it— and suddenly it's finished, and we are set free. 

A burglar, needing money, decided to rob a safe in a store. On the safe door, he was very pleased to find the following note: "Please don't use dynamite. This safe is not locked. Just turn the knob." The burglar did so. Instantly a heavy sandbag fell on his head: the entire premises were floodlighted, and alarm bells started clanging. As the police were carrying him out on a stretcher, he was heard to complain: "My confidence in human nature has been severely shaken." We all go through a time of questioning the goodness of humanity and of life on this earth. We may feel betrayed or disappointed or let down by life. It didn't work out the way we thought it would. Yet the real deepening of our inner life occurs precisely at the same time that our outer values are called into question. If we don't opt for a skeptical or pessimistic conclusion but stay open, we come to realize a deeper meaning and purpose to this existence which has its own affirmation of the goodness of life on this earth. 

Sometimes when we feel very stuck inside of ourselves, we are really on the brink of a great spiritual breakthrough. Just as billions ofspring roots lie just underneath the crust of the earth, waiting to shoot into the light of day, so too our inner spiritual realization lies just below our conscious awareness, awaiting its moment of awakening. Even though the ground outside may still look barren, gray and bleak, spring will have its day, and everything will burst into green and pink and yellow loveliness. So too, whenever we are feeling especially bleak or barren or gray inside of ourselves, a day will arrive when our inner life will burst into joy, and all our days of being stuck will melt from our hearts, and only peace and freedom will remain. As our fingernails grow, so too does the hidden dynamic of our inner breakthrough unfold. We are not consciously aware of our fingernails growing this instant, and we may also not be aware that, deep inside of each of us, our spiritual awakening is coming into light. 

Have you ever felt really disappointed? When we were children perhaps we received a gift at Christmas or our birthday, and we were expecting something really exciting that turned out to be socks or handkerchiefs and were so disappointed. Or perhaps as children or adolescents, a close friend disappointed us— the person we trusted let us down and we realized that he or she wasn't such a good friend after all. As we grow older, maybe we have felt disappointment in career or vocational expectations. When we've been disappointed as children or even as adults, it's sometimes easy to become somewhat disillusioned. We say, I won't let myself be disappointed again; I just won't hope or be open any more— they won't get to me. But this subtle attitude of rejection keeps us from being open when something even greater than anything we could have imagined or expected comes our way. Drop it and stay open regardless of the past. 

U.G. Krishnamurti once said to me, "My words strip away the false so that you can be free to be related to all things." It's interesting that I remembered the part about stripping away of the false, but I almost forgot the part about 'so that you can be free to be related to everything.' We can be so caught up in trying to free ourselves from things that aren't working or that are a distraction that we forget to connect with the Greater Life that is forever around us and within us. I had a friend who would always keep his eyes on the ground so that he wouldn't get distracted from his inner meditations by looking at people or things in the world. Yet people and things are also part of Reality— how can we find the Real by avoiding anything or anyone who is part of the givenness of this life? Albert Camus said that we should affirm the true with our whole being. So when we do our soul-searching or forgiveness and release, let's also be sure to remember to affirm all the good of this life too. 

There's an old saying that March rushes in like a lion and leaves like a lamb. This is a month of transition which ushers in a profound change in nature and in ourselves: the cold winter days and nights give way to the soothing warmth of spring. The stark, barren trees and colorless grass melt into pale, green beauty throughout this month of transformation. When there is a change in the seasons, we sometimes feel unsettled— we have become so used to winter, the way everything feels and looks, that when the outer change begins to happen, we, too, go through a time of inner release and transition. This is a joyous time because we actually see the creative process of new life coming into being throughout this month. Each day we see trees coming into blossom, grass turning green, flowers blooming in loveliness. As the 13th century Chinese Zen Master Wu-men said, "Ten thousand flowers in spring, the moon in autumn, a cool breeze in summer, snow in winter. If your mind isn't clouded by unnecessary things, this is the best season of your life." 

Where is our heart leading us right now? And are we following? Are we listening to our heart as we walk our path in this world? Sometimes we are being so analytic and critical that we miss the heart's simple directness that cuts through to the very core of things. When our life seems to be a confused and tangled web of conflicting thoughts, we may just need to settle down inside of ourselves and listen to the heart's simplicity. Many times our real breakthroughs in life come when we simply slow down, become quiet and listen and let our heart's desire reveal itself to us. We've never fallen in love by listening to the intellect. But an open heart brings love and joy and fulfillment into our lives easily and quickly. Follow your heart and joy will be yours. 

Let's take a moment to recognize the healing and transforming power of laughter in our hearts. A light heart heals us from fear and worry. G.K. Chesterton said, "Angels fly because they take themselves lightly." Laughter dissolves the hard places inside of us, and laughter dissolves the hard situations in the outer world. We know we are really progressing spiritually when we can laugh at and with ourselves. Roshi Sasaki says, "One genuine belly laugh is worth many hours of Zen meditation." Right now let's recognize the laughter in our hearts that frees us, heals us and makes us whole. 

Kenneth Patchen once said, "Oh, lonesome's a bad place / to get crowded into." Sometimes we feel all alone in this life. Yet this may just be part of the life cycle. There are times when we are in close relationship, and there are other times when we experience solitude. Sometimes our solitude is a time of inner healing, cleansing and release, a preparation for new relationship. And our new relationship may be the fulfillment inherent in our solitude. We can experience joy and peace in both our relationship and our solitude as long as we don't demand relationship in our solitude or solitude in our relationship. When we are alone, we can relax and enjoy our aloneness without feeling lonely or depressed. This self-sufficiency allows us to relax and be in relationship with others without being dependent or needy on them for our happiness or well-being. We say that it's good to have close relationships, but it's equally good to make a friend of ourselves when we are alone. 

Ram Dass once said, "Disillusion is the last illusion." When things in our life seem not to be working out as we had hoped or expected, we may be tempted to give up on our dreams, to settle for a cynical outlook. We hear people saying, "Expect the worst and you won't be disappointed." And we ask ourselves, "Is this the attitude we want to carry through life?" When things don't go our way, it's easy to let our disappointment make us feel disillusioned. But if we allow ourselves to adopt a fixed, negative perspective, then we have closed the door to a sudden break-through of insight or revelation that opens up a whole new realm of possibilities for us. When we become tempted to settle for the negative answer, we can remember Ram Dass: "Disillusion is the last illusion," and drop our discouragement and open our heart for a new beginning to discover itself within us. 

The way of the heart is the way of love. Love brings us by a way we know not to where we need to be in this life. Love guides our feet to find our path of bliss. Love guides our minds to illumination. Love guides our souls to God. With those we love, there, we find God's Presence, God's Goodness and God's Grace. A woman once came to the great Indian Yogi, Ramakrishna, and said, "I cannot love God." Ramakrishna remained silent for a moment. Then he asked, "Is there anyone in this life you do love?" "I love my little nephew," the woman replied. "There is God." Love lights our way through this life. Love releases us from the pain of our longing. As we open our hearts to Love, the Universe suddenly fills us with a joy we never felt before, and we see a beauty we never saw before. Everyone and everything take on a new radiance as we see them through the eyes of Love. And as we listen with Love's ears, we hear the music of stars. Love transforms our earth into wonder. Love heals our past and brings joy to our future. There is no path to Love; Love itself is the path.