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I'd like to begin with a quote that's pretty much anonymous, although I've seen versions of it from Christian philosophers and Buddhists and Gandhi.

This is it. The thought becomes the word. The word manifests as the deed. The deed develops into the habit.

Habit hardens into character. Character gives birth to destiny.

So watch your thoughts with care and let them spring from love, born out of respect for all beings.

So this is an expression of karma, which really is saying that causes lead to effects.

That when we have certain beliefs and thoughts, they create certain feelings that then turn into actions and the actions become habits.

Those habits end up really creating our sense of identity and if they're really hardened, become our destiny.

And we tend to keep repeating and repeating and repeating our creatures of habit.

When they create our destiny and when they're based in fear, these habits, they really become the block in our lives to accessing all that we can be,

to accessing happiness and creativity and in a deep way a sense of our spirit.

I'd say that one of the deepest expressions of despair that comes my way is when someone will report that,

well, I've been repeating the same pattern of pushing people away, or grasping on, or undermining myself, or whatever it is,

all my life, or as long as I can remember.

There's a real feeling of despair because how can I ever change? It's so deeply grooved.

So tonight's reflection will really be on how we can awaken from these habitual chains of thinking, feeling, and then acting,

this stimulus reaction cycle that we get caught into that really combined our lives.

And the title of the talk is really the freedom of responding, not reacting.

And I think of this as a very universal kind of theme in terms of transformation,

because every one of us, if we're in any way suffering,

we're suffering because there's some patterning that has locked in,

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