An 80-20 split: practice, read. Your prayer to the Ultimate: Live, Love, Laugh. You are held to my breast, dear child: you are safe with me.

Practice! Practice! Practice! If you read something nice in a book, practice it! If you hear something inspiring and right, live it! If you are presented with wisdom, chew on it until you've assimilated it. Then put it into practice.

There are so many words, so many books. Even the wisest of them is worth absolutely nothing if it is merely read and then left, forgotten. Better to read just one deep sentence and practice it for the rest of your life than read a mountain of the wisest literature and keep it all up in your head, intellectually understood but not embodied or lived.

You KNOW at least one wise thing that would be great if you put into practice already. Do it! Stop reading! Just start doing it for two minutes. And then, maybe again, tomorrow, for two more. And perhaps the next day. Just two minutes. Just one. That would be far more useful than reading all the wise things I or anyone else has ever written.

In general, I'd recommend maybe an 80-20 split, of doing to reading. 20% learning wisdom, 80% practicing it. But better to err on the side of too much doing. 80% means not just for a few minutes a day, while sitting in meditation. It means all of life should become a meditation. A walking, breathing prayer to the Ultimate, to the light of Absolute good that is the fabric of reality. That is Love, full and without condition.

Live it. As much as you can, live it. Do it. Stop thinking about it. Don't be afraid. Put your trust in that Light like a child laying back in its mother's arms and it will hold and protect you like a perfect parent. Don't worry about messing it up. Life is supposed to be messy. You're supposed to mess it up. Sometimes. But we keep going, and God doesn't love you any less, in fact he, we, all, love you even more, for having tried. For continuing to try, for not giving up. It means nothing if success is guaranteed every time, first time. Live, and get dirty, and know that you are loved like the dirty, mud-covered child you are. Laugh at it. It's really pretty funny, when you get a large enough perspective. Except for the sad people who have forgotten how to laugh. Who have forgotten so much.

Be brave in your joy. Do not fear it. I wish that for all of you. And of course for myself, for whome this post is most for.