minder. Instead of habitually clinging to what’s de-
lightful, you could become accustomed to giving it
away, sending it out to others on the outbreath. This
enables you always to maintain a joyful mind. It be-
gins to ease away the burden of maintaining your own
private happiness as well as your usual load of un-
happy situations and minor irritations—the burden
of ego.
On the other hand, sending out the joyful stuff is
also difficult to do. As someone said, “I like doing the
outbreath with this idea of sharing. Sharing is really
nice, but giving it away? That means I wouldn’t have
it anymore.” The outbreath and sharing what’s pleas-
ant can be threatening. You don’t often feel willing to
share or give away that pleasure.
There’s a lot of joy as your burden begins to lessen,
and it comes from doing anything that begins to
change the pattern of fearing and wanting to resist
what’s unpleasant. Resistance is really what causes
the pain; more than the anger itself, or the jealousy it-
self, it’s resistance that causes the pain. Anything
that begins to lighten up that resistance helps us to
relax and open and celebrate.
Sooner or later you will find yourself in a situation
where you can’t change the outer circumstances at
all, and you realize it all comes down to how you re-
late to things—whether you continue to struggle
against everything that’s coming at you or you begin
Lighten Up 131