No hunter places a trap while the animals are watching. Like a hunter, negativity tries to catch you with traps of negative thoughts and feelings. But if you are in a state of observation -- if you are watching -- you catch negativity off guard. You know where the trap is, and you avoid the place. Then that negativity, having no energy to sustain itself, dissolves.

Be aware of the viewing point; observe and record.

If there is food on the table and you have eaten enough, stop. Observe yourself. Watch what you are doing. If you have a headache and it feels like the worst headache in history, observe your headache. Close your eyes and look at it. You may say, "But every time I close my eyes, I think about it more and it hurts more." Yes, you think about it more. But thinking about it is not the same as observing it. Thinking can be a headache in itself! We learn nothing by fretting and becoming impatient. We don't grow. As Spiritual Warriors we want growth and expansion. So we observe.

Reclaiming our inner territory -- the route to becoming a Spiritual Warrior -- means learning to wake ourselves up. When we are attempting to wake up, we find ourselves involved in a process called unfolding. Many things will surface, and we will become aware that they have been taking up space in our inner territory. Many people find themselves resisting what surfaces, but that is futile. To reclaim our inner territory successfully -- to maintain harmony and balance -- is to enter a state of observation.

To know what is spiritual in a situation, you have to get above it, not run any of your own stuff on it, and move to a place of observation. If you would just enter into observation, you would be able to perceive so much more clearly. From that state of observation, you realize that there's nothing there. You have nothing to gain or lose one way or another, and it doesn't matter whether you are involved or not. You'll be able to see things really clearly, just for what they are. And if you don't see something clearly, you shouldn't assume anything about it, because as soon as you assume anything, guess what? You've moved out of observation and you have your own stuff mixed up in there.

We have karma related to our levels of consciousness. Emotional karma is emotional reaction, where you react emotionally to a person's body or expression, the weather, your boss, the traffic on the freeway, the state of the world -- anything. To deal with emotional karma, you learn how not to react emotionally, and the first step is to observe.

Observation is an important skill to practice. It allows you to stay present so that you can look at whatever is going on in your life with loving neutrality.

Get friendly with fear. When it comes along, say, "Come and sit down, my friend; let's see what you've got going." Sit with it. Observe it. Say, "This is fear; this is my friend." Most of us consider fear to be an enemy. How can it be your friend? Because it is going to reveal its great power -- the knowledge that it is merely a veil which conceals the Divine from us. We have kept ourselves from seeing and knowing the power because it comes disguised as fear. If someone came up to you and said, "I'm going to reveal to you the great power of the universe," would you look at them as an enemy?

Often, as you begin to reclaim your inner territory, you find your mind running in many directions, full of thoughts, memories, ideas -- good and bad, serious and trivial; and you wonder what to do in the face of all this commotion. The answer is, simply observe it. It is the same with what upsets you. When something annoying or upsetting presents itself to you, just stand back and say, "Here comes all that upset. How very interesting." Don't feel you have to put a lot of emotion into it, or fantasize about it.