You have made the relative life you move in the center of your life when it is really the periphery. You gasp in awe or agony at what transpires on the surface and forget about the core. You are, indeed, wrapped up in your physical existence.

What if all that transpires in the earth state of life had nothing really to do with you? What if you are not at its mercy? What if present life is merely preamble? Or post script? Or just the playing out of a series of events, and you are just at the scene?

What if earthly life is a walk you take for a while? You do not consider the walk to be your whole life. You do not consider that everything you see or come across is Your Life. You know you are not the pavement or the buildings. You are not grander in front of the Empire State Building than you are in front of a bungalow. In one landscape or another, you are you.

If the day is cloudy, you do not feel it is personal to you. If the temperature is hot or cold, you do not consider yourself the cause nor the victim. If the sun shines, you bask in it or you put on a sun hat. You make of it what you will. What you make of it is your life.

You have tended to think that the events and circumstances of your life are you. You have tended to think that life singles you out for reward or punishment, and so, your spirits go up or down according to what is in your path, as if you are the whim of the universe instead of the heart of it.

Life is much more than what happens in it and what you make of it. You are one who interprets the events in your life. What language do you interpret your life in? What color do you put on it? Surely, life has a life of its own, independent of you. Can you not be independent of it?

Whatever stream you are paddling in at this moment, are you different? If the road you walk on right now is rocky, does that mean you have to be rocked by it? How much does life affect you? Are you not more than the surface?

Yes, you are. You are deeper and you are higher than the surface events of your life. Whatever sweeps into your life or sweeps out, you are the same light.

Have you not taken life personally? Haven't occurrences in your life meant more to you than life itself? Cannot life mean more to you than what befalls in it? Whatever your position in life, you are far more than it.

You are a traveler in life. You travel here and there, but your ports of call are not the sum of you. Whatever country you travel in, you are you. Whatever hotel you stay in, you are you. Whether you catch your flight or you miss it, you are you. You are the same you on land as on sea. When there is a storm that batters you, you are still you. Come what may, you are you.

Prince or pauper, you are you. Admired or scorned, you are you. Young or old, you are you. Wise or foolish. Even in what you call death, you are you.

Passing events are one thing. You are another. Events are temporary. You are eternal.