There is a Buddhist expression that urges us to burn ourselves up completely in whatever were doing at the moment.

Another way of saying this is to let go of holding back. Put your all into your work, your play, your breathing, thinking and being.

When youre listening to someone else, thoroughly listen and dont rehearse what youre going to say next.

A similar idea is to use everything that the universe gives you.

If it gives you a seven-foot frame, use it to play basketball! If youre given the ability to draw and to paint, why would you ever consider putting anything like a keyboard under your fingers when you could have a canvas there?

Adversity is also to be used. And as the wise person once said, Many are the uses of adversity.

Some people earn and then spend or lose fortunes. There has to be a lesson in that journey!

How can we recognize, truly know and enjoy the sweet without the sour?

The other day I was surfing web sites and I came across two black and white pictures of actor Rod Steiger. Always a vivid performer, what you may not know is he suffered from severe depression for many years.

In an interview, he claimed he wasted at least 10-15 years of his professional life, feeling down in the dumps.

Of course, he suffered, and he was the one most intimately familiar with his circumstances, which are not to be trivialized. Still, you have to wonder if that decade or more of waste wasnt part of a bigger plan for him, perhaps an ultra-serious plan of self-discovery.

Perhaps it was his predilection for feeling deeply that infused his dramatizations with such unmistakable authenticity.

True, it was a huge price to pay, but maybe that, or its equivalent is what it takes to become masterful, or at least a master of oneself.

I believe Rod Steiger used everything, and theres no greater way to live ones life.