your affliction
is your addiction
to the ego's fiction

Yes, the ego's fiction?a great topic and a great story/wonderful lesson/fortunate occurrence?to relate to you this week. My wife and I were recently in New York to attend a family function. We were on our way from Manhattan to New Jersey by train and were in the waiting area. When the train was announced we quickly mobilized to get to the gate and find seats. The train departs and about 20 minutes later my wife jumps up and looks around frantically. "What is it?" I ask. What's wrong? "I left my purse in the waiting area. When we left to board the train, I felt light, like something was missing" she replied. At this point, she is frantically calling every possible number to see if someone could look for it, or maybe turned it in to the lost and found at Penn Station. This goes on for 30 minutes with no luck, a lot of frustration, and certainly turned what should have been a pleasant train ride into something much less pleasant. I told her that we'll call the credit card companies, and replace what we need too, but obviously we were not happy.

We arrive at our destination and get off the train. My wife is in the process of canceling her credit cards when a call from her own cell phone from the purse comes through. The voice at the other end asked for my wife by name. It turns out the purse, with all of the contents, was turned in and I was thankful and crying, and feeling very fortunate. We made arrangements to pick up the purse in the morning. When I got back to the hotel that afternoon, out of nowhere my wife says to me "when we first sat down in the waiting area, I looked around to see who was sitting near us. There were some people sleeping, and it was clear that many of them came from all walks of life, and I thought to myself I was not going to judge them. They are probably good people with their own stories and jobs and doing whatever they do.” I was amazed after hearing this, because when I sat