This was a question I found in my e-mail last week, and boy did I relate to it!

"Douglas, I've been meditating for some time now, or at least I've been trying. My friends seem to be having all sorts of fabulous spiritual experiences, meeting angels, and so on. But I don't see anything. I just sit there watching my mind scamper about. I'm very frustrated. Help!" -- Zatoichi.

Well, Zatoichi, I've had the same experiences. Once I was at a group meditation with a swami in charge and people were told beforehand that they may be asked to volunteer their experiences during the twenty minute meditation that followed. And they did!

It's been just a few years since the world was going to end, for the umpteenth time. Let's look at us and the world for a moment.

The world is always filled with pain and grief and cruelty. This is the land of karma. It isn't where we come for a vacation. It's where we come to work off some of the stuff we have accumulated, so really unpleasant things happen here.

And as long as people are cruel to other people it will continue to be like this. If one group of people bring up their children to hate another group and be cruel to them whenever possible, maybe even to the point of exterminating them as painfully as possible, what is their karmic reward? Are they all going to be born to families of enlightened beings? Do they die and go straight to their idea of heaven? Or do they come back to experience the fruits of their karma?