Question: I lost a great deal of money to a dishonest business partner. I can’t believe I could have fallen for such an obvious scam or that a person I thought was my friend could have stolen from me what I had hoped to be my children’s legacy. I’m burning up inside with rage, guilt, and concern over what my children will do now. I know this is killing me. What would you do in my position?

Answer: To begin with, I would muster everything I could find in me and, whatever the personal cost, I would refuse to be self-pitying. Self-pity and regrets about the past are born out of being identified with the idea that you could have done differently than you did. If you could have, you would have. Give up the regret. It only ties you to the old life-level that didn’t know better and keeps you from the one that does.

Then I would start over, right from the beginning, whatever that may be — or wherever that may take me. There is no power on earth that can interfere with this intention and act.

Next, instead of falling into despair over my losses, I would deeply examine what it is inside of me that feels all I am worth is money, or whatever it says to me I’ve lost, and then I would get busy losing interest in that nature that calls itself by my name.

Hatred of anyone, or anything destroys the one who hates. This is unequivocal spiritual law — so I would do all that I could to lay down my resentments by seeing that all I’m doing is burning myself up with wasted energies that could be put to productive purposes.

And lastly, I would seriously consider, not what it is that I think I won’t be able to leave my children, but what it is that I’m giving them with my current attitudes and example. Then, as tough as it may be to act it out, I would make it abundantly clear to them through my revised actions that a man is not what he possesses, but is, rather, what possesses him. And since it’s possible to choose what possesses you, which you start doing by refusing to be possessed of self-pity and other dark spirits, this means you can choose in favor — over and over again — as many times as necessary — what’s authentically good and True for you.