If your answer to some sad memory that floats through your mind is to just drift along with it, why should you be surprised when you suddenly find yourself being carried over the falls of deep grief? The reason you have the feeling of falling is because you and your answer are never apart.

Your answer to the challenge of any moment — and what you experience as the quality of your life in that moment — are one and the same thing. In other words, the way you answer life’s events, and what you experience as your life, are really one.

You can’t separate yourself from what you receive from life any more than the ocean is apart from its own waves.

Within the space of each beat of your heart, you get the exact measure of the answer you gave to life the moment before. No more, no less: Life is always true in this way. Without fail, and without judgment, life speaks directly to you through your own immediate experience of it. Learn to listen for its wise council whenever you meet a moment. What it always says is: “Here is you back.”

Reality is a perfect mirror, and our fearless nature is the perfect teacher because it never denies what it sees. Your life can be just as light-filled and light-hearted as is this pure, elevated Self, if you’re willing to see that when there’s something sour in your life, it’s your answer that’s bitter.