All right: How to be in an unhappy moment? They’re inevitable. You can never avoid the unhappy moments forever. They’re going to come and find you sooner or later. It’s the nature of being human. You can’t escape it.

So what do you do with an unhappy moment? How do you handle that? Most moments are good moments, this is true. You don’t have that many unhappy moments. That’s why a lot of the times the suffering that we are doing is happening in the mind. But the truth is, now and then there IS a very unhappy moment. For people who are starving, that’s an unhappy moment. For people who are very ill, that’s an unhappy moment. For people who are facing terminal cancer, imminent death, that can be an unhappy moment. I’m not saying that unhappy moments don’t happen; they do. So how do you handle an unhappy moment? What to do?

The first thing to realize is that the moment will pass. Even if you die, at the end of that moment, it will pass. Even if that moment lasts for many moments, and there’s no relief, it will still pass, sooner or later, but that moment does not define who you are. That moment is just something that’s happening in your awareness. It doesn’t mean that you have to fall into illusion. You can recognize that unhappy moment as the illusion that it is. And even though that illusion doesn’t go away very easily, especially for instance if you’re facing terminal illness, or you just lost your leg in a car accident, or some other kind of permanent thing has happened, it doesn’t mean that you have to stay unhappy, even as you’re surrounded by an unhappy moment.

If you’re starving, then this what is here in your moment, in your life. If you can get food, then get food; if you can’t, then accept what is. I know this sounds really harsh, but the truth of the matter is that there’s many, many people in this world starving, while others live in luxury. It’s very unbalanced. For those who are starving, they’re representing to the rest of the world the lack of awareness of those in luxury, and representing the powerlessness of those of us who wish we could alleviate that suffering for them. They represent unhappy moments that many are trying to ignore. Many people lie in hospital beds, suffering, facing death, while the world goes on in denial about this reality.

Unhappy moments are part of life. They’re unavoidable. Unhappy moments have to be here, for some reason. We wish that they didn’t have to be, but if they have to be here (and if they are here, they have to be here) then face it fully, with grace, with wisdom, with long-suffering, and the understanding that it is an illusion in the mind of God; and that what is real is the consciousness that is perceiving the unhappy moment.