Someone once asked my teacher Swami Satchidananda how to get re-balanced after being thrown off course by negative emotions such as fear and anger. “What is it that you are fearful of?” he asked. “Fear of loss? You came with nothing and will go with nothing. Fear of abandonment? No one can abandon you if you do not abandon yourself. Fear of rejection? Do things for the right reasons and not so that people will approve of you.” We lose our contentment, he explained, when we put false value on things or have expectations that are not met.

Only recently I had to learn this lesson on a deeper level myself. Before sitting down to write this blog, I was told that my major credit card had been shut down because someone gained access to my number and attempted to withdraw a large sum of money at a local teller. This action would cause me a week of inconvenience having to contact all of the vendors who received regular auto-payments from that account.

“How could anyone be so evil as to cause me to lose all of this time?” I asked grudgingly? After working myself into a tizzy, I finally realized the lesson: I still had little compassion for certain types of spiritual stupidity, particularly when it affected me.

Soon the words of Eckhart Tolle came to me: “All stress comes from resisting the present moment.”