Life is difficult. There is pain and suffering and at times there is a deep misery or depression beyond our control. Sometimes we fail and sometimes the world just kicks our ass.

It's ok to fail, forget, blow it, lose it and fall. To move forward we must allow ourselves to look the fool, to trip up and make mistakes. The saying goes, fall six times and get up seven but no one tells you how long you can stay down. I say, stay down as long as you need to and you'll know when to get back up.

Just know this: what keeps us down is how we talk to ourselves in our heads. Watch out for self deprecating thoughts and actions but don't try to use positive mantras to get up again. Your job is to just watch and observe where the thoughts come from and become aware of how you may be sustaining your own failures by your thinking patterns.

We can move forward without the harsh inner critic and the condescending mind chatter. Be aware of the difficulties in going against the stream of normalcy and learn how to coast where you need to coast.

Things to remember:

We don't need to feel bliss to be ok in life. That type of thinking denotes that there is someone who is feeling bliss and someone who is not. Bliss just is and we are that.

Create time to be natural and discover what the natural state is without using the mind to define what is natural.

Give yourself permission to fail.

Watch out for holding on to expectations of perfection.

See that it's all perfect when the judgements and expectations are silent.

In life we are goal driven and it's ok to have a goal to pay the bills and put food on the table but we should be weary of holding onto goals of being a perfect person.

Observe without taking notes and labeling your progress. Just watch the one who watches. Once we start to become aware of the witness inside, the pure awareness that we are, we can experience the non dual (our natural state) first hand.