The more we probe both the heights and the depths of the universe with telescopes and microscopes, the more we realize that an order seeks to emerge through everything. When we peer deeply enough into it, even the seeming chaos of the world of particles gives rise to a sort of order.

A kind of “intelligence” runs through everything. Not intelligence in the sense of human thought, but in the sense of an amazing organizing tendency.

Yet, there is a randomness within the overall order of creation. This balance of order and randomness means that the future, while headed in a certain general direction, is undetermined in its specifics.

In other words, the very makeup of the world facilitates a huge measure of freedom.

The freedom within creation is the result of the interplay of the self-organizing tendency of matter and ¬chance.

But as the creation develops and becomes increasingly complex, giving rise to animals and humans, chance is augmented by choice.

This allows us to have a say in what we are becoming. It opens up the way for us to function as the creators of our lives. We gain the ability to take responsibility for our lives, our wellbeing, our fulfillment.

When a tragedy happens such as the cyclone that hit Burma, we are seeing the effects of the raw forces of nature. The world is in many ways a volatile system—cyclones, tornadoes, earthquakes, volcanoes, raging wild fires. Beyond our planet, the universe itself is volatile.

Yet within the seeming chaos there arises the order that gives birth to human intelligence, which enables us to act from choice instead of being simply victims of chance.

At this moment, the leaders of the nation of Burma are making choices that are going to intertwine with the random chaos that has struck, and the combination of the two will determine their future.

While the leadership tries to go against the tide of compassion flowing from the whole world, seeking to keep their nation locked down, people who have little or no food, no safe water, no medical help, and whose lives have been devastated will also make choices in response to the chance that has wreaked havoc. And out of the clash of both chance and choice, a new future will be forged.

This is the nature of all our lives.

Each day, in one form or another, we are handed a set of circumstances that are a combination of both chance and choice—and what we do with that mix determines the direction of our lives.

We can be reactive to chance, or we can respond to it from our heart depths, with great presence of mind, in a creative and meaningful manner.

People who are hungry and in terrible conditions right now in Burma are asking, “How will we go on?”

They will go on, despite the horror of the tragedy.

Though life seems impossible in much of Burma right now, because in so many ways the lives of the Burmese people have been determined by the choices of a leadership that has suppressed their ability to determine their future, there will be a future—and it will be different.

The “order” imposed by malevolent rulers is never forever. Into the order comes a tide of chance that smashes it to pieces, and there is the chance that life will never be the same again. Choice will have entered the picture.

It’s the same in all our lives. Chance gives us a choice to change our circumstances—to create a meaningful direction for ourselves.

Out of the chaos arises a new order—either one we allow others to impose on us, or an order we create ourselves by taking responsibility for our lives in conjunction with chance.

We don’t get to control the tides of time. We do get to either react to them angrily and destructively, or to respond to them creatively and turn chance into choice.

Each day, out of the chaos of life, we can feel sorry for ourselves and bemoan our lot. Or we have the chance to accept what has happened, then create lives of love, caring, and compassion by taking responsibility for the direction of our lives in the face of what chance has handed to us.

When a tragedy the size of the cyclone that hit Burma occurs, with 100,000 now considered dead, the immensity of the suffering is beyond comprehension.

Whole communities have been destroyed, lives ripped to pieces, and in places a generation of children wiped out. As one surveys the wreckage, there is simply no semblance of normality left at all.

The initial loss the people of Burma have suffered seems so incredibly painful in itself, but in my experience it’s just the beginning of the agony people are going to face in the weeks and months ahead.

I went through Hurricane Katrina in the New Orleans area. In the wake of the hurricane, I saw what can happen to human beings who have been traumatized on such a scale.

Traumatized individuals often are simply not themselves, with many of them suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. They can barely get from one moment to the next, so reduced are they to a level of sheer survival.

Some of the people I knew and trusted, not realizing they were in prolonged shock, began acting in ways that were so foreign to who I knew them to be, it was bizarre. They believed things that weren’t true, changed their opinion of people overnight, and did harmful things that were utterly destructive of all they had worked to build.

I knew this wasn’t who these individuals really were. Rather, what Eckhart Tolle calls their “pain body” had taken over. They had become lost to themselves and to others in a deep well of pain.

When people are subjected to this much trauma, they look for someone to blame. They want a scapegoat. They lose their head instead of using it, caught up totally in emotional reactivity, rage, and a sense of having suffered a gross injustice. They lash out at possible targets, not really realizing the damage they are doing. As Jesus said of his crucifiers, “Forgive them. They know not what they do.”

The actual damage of a cyclone or hurricane is bad enough, especially when there is loss of life. But the psychological damage is inestimable, and in many cases simply never gets corrected. People’s lives, even their personalities, are changed.

There is only one possible sane response to a disaster on such a scale, and that is total acceptance.

To resist, to blame, to become angry serves no purpose at all. We have to accept, and then pick up the pieces and go on. Simple recognition of what has happened, then moving fully into the present moment in complete acceptance, is the only action that makes sense.

When people accept instead of resisting, they have the courage to not only go on with their lives, but also to embrace those who are suffering and show great compassion. Their resilience comes out when they accept.

In New Orleans and along the Gulf Coast, as well as in many towns and cities far and wide, people opened their hearts and their homes to those who were destitute, often inviting strangers to live with them for many months.

For these people, acceptance reigned. Where there was acceptance, compassion trumped tragedy.

The cyclone will transform Burma.

Burma has been a suppressed nation for a long time now. This cyclone is going to have a huge effect on its future. People have put up with the government oppressing them for so long because of fear. But when a disaster of this size strikes, the government is just not able to cope or control the outcome.

In the midst of this turmoil, millions of people are going to have to find their feet for themselves. They are going to have to recover from immense pain, terrible loss, great suffering—and do it on their own.

In the end, there will arise a generation that will be comprised of strong human beings, people who will no longer allow a government to control them.

The emotional anguish after Hurricane Katrina was beyond anything I had ever experienced. But the word Katrina means cleansing, and for me it was just that. It changed my life for the better forever. It changed the lives of many. The point of transformation was their acceptance, which allowed them to find their resilience and their compassion.

Out of the agony came a depth of self-understanding beyond where I had gone before, an integrity that surpassed what I had been capable of, and a love of myself and my life that I had only known partially until now.

When tragedy of such immensity happens, many people don’t want to accept and let go. They want to flail around and blame. They want to feel angry. They want to pity themselves. They want to wallow in a victim mentality.

But in the end, none of this proves to be of any value. In the end, we must all go on. In the end, we must use the situation to discover our strength—to find within ourselves a resilience we didn’t know we were capable of.

In September, Namaste Publishing will publish a brand new book by Dr David Berceli, entitled The Revolutionary Trauma Release Process. It is about transcending our toughest times. It’s a book that will help people everywhere understand their reaction to trauma, and deal effectively with the trauma and tragedy in their lives.

The reality is, trauma on a vast scale is likely to increase on our planet—partly because of the greatly increased population, particularly in poorer countries, but also because we are experiencing climate changes that are going to produce extremes of weather.

In the end, we shall have to realize that we are one human family, in this together, and open our doors and our hearts to each other. In the end, we shall all be transformed by forces we cannot control but that, if we learn to accept them, can cleanse, strengthen, and ultimately enrich all our lives.

Many of us feel we lose ourselves whenever we get into any kind of close relationship—whether a romantic relationship, closeness to family members such as our parents or siblings, close friendships, or even people with whom we work. People seem to have a power over us we wish they didn’t have.

We want the enjoyment of sharing life with others on a close basis, but we don’t want it at the expense of losing ourselves. We want to be among people with whom we can be ourselves.

It’s my observation that the relationships that seem to cause us problems come into our lives for a reason. I’m convinced we draw them to us to do the work of becoming true to ourselves while closely connected to others.

The trouble is, most of us are oblivious of what the purpose of such connections is, so we don’t know how to capitalize on their presence in our life. Still, even when we are unaware of why a particular connection came into our life, it does its vital work in time. Being aware, however, can really help it along.

I went through a lot of anguish before I realized that I drew to myself each relationship I’ve ever participated in—whether family, a romantic partner, or a person at work—precisely to highlight the issues my inner being was asking me to face up to.

Through all of this heartache, I learned not to be afraid of or resist the trying situations relationships precipitate in our lives—with the exception of situations that are dangerous. Instead, I began to use all the situations that arose in my life to become the unique person I was born to be but until this point in my life had not known how to be.

I discovered that the route to a meaningful connection with others is the opposite of what many of the self-help books, magazine articles, and authorities on how to relate to others have told us. The source of our relationship problems doesn’t tend to be what we think it is. Likewise, the solution doesn’t lie where we like to imagine it lies.

There is a place for some of the relationship skills widely emphasized today—skills such as really listening, showing consideration to people, and treating each other with decorum and respect. But no amount of skills will fix what’s wrong or supply what’s lacking in most of our relationships.

Rather than being solutions to problems, good communication, caring, and admiration are byproducts of a good relationship. For most of us they come way down the line in a painful process.

While my development has been my own personal journey, I find the patterns of behavior I exhibited are repeated to one degree or another in the lives of people everywhere. Here then is an axiom that I believe holds true for all relationships:

The more we are able to be our authentic self, the more are we capable of being profoundly connected to another person. Paradoxically, it is in the heat of risking closeness to others that we learn how to become our authentic self.

Once I realized the wisdom of this axiom, I learned to use each situation to change myself—to become more myself than I had ever been. Instead of putting the focus on why the other was doing what they were doing, I began asking why what they were doing was having such an effect on me. Why did their behavior either intimidate me or drive me up the wall?

Little did I know that using all of my relationships as a mirror to change myself would be hot as hell, overwhelmingly anxiety-provoking, and extremely painful. I would be heated and heated until a process of transformation of who I understood myself to be and how I lived my life got underway.

I would discover why I was the way I was, felt the way I did, did the things I did. I would come to know myself at a depth I had never before plumbed.

All of my hidden fears would surface. The pain of life in the home in which I grew up—the pain of what I had always thought of as a good home and a loving family—would come flooding out. Not only the pain my family inflicted on me, but also the pain that I, who was no pristine prince, inflicted on them.

I would experience the resolution of issues that had unconsciously driven my behavior for decades. I would begin to feel like me, at peace with myself and happy with myself, instead of experiencing myself as a battlefield, constantly stressed, in conflict, anxiety-ridden, lonely, angry.

It was literally a coming to birth of a new person—a coming into being of who I was born to be but had never been.

If you are interested in taking this journey, using each relationship in your life to wake up to your real self, there is a wealth of information throughout this website to help you do just that.

Soon, we’ll begin a series of daily columns that will examine how to use relationships and life’s challenging situations to grow into the person we are meant to be, using the bestselling book The Pillars of the Earth as a source of insight. If you haven’t read the book, which is an Oprah book club pick, you might want to either purchase a copy or download an unabridged audio version (which I found extremely well done) to your iPod so you can either listen or read ahead.

“I can see my dad in a lot of my behavior,” I said. “He could be very reactive at times, losing it over the least thing. But I also see how I developed my own ways of reacting, and in some areas I outdo him. I don’t like this about myself.”

“It’s no fun hating things about yourself,” said my friend. “It’s a painful way to live.”

Collecting my thoughts I asked, “So how do I stop being like my dad?”

“You begin by taking responsibility for your reactions,” came the answer. “Taking responsibility, instead of blaming or feeling sorry for ourselves, enables us to intervene in the behavior patterns we’ve copied.”

Growing up means we quit blaming someone else for the way we behave. We quit talking to others about the bad things that happened to us to cause us to behave as we do.

Blaming keeps us stuck in the past instead of coping with the present. Telling our story of how we got this way, of how awful our childhood was and what terrible things life has done to us since, just etches the groove deeper—like a well-rehearsed choir.

Changing our behavior patterns requires we stop mollycoddling ourselves, comforting ourselves, pitying ourselves, and feeling like a victim. It’s not pity we need but the courage to take ourselves on and grow up.

Growing up also means we give up hoping for some magical insight to suddenly transform us. We realize that the power of transformation rests in our own hands. We take charge of our lives and embark on the challenging task of mastering ourselves.

As we become aware that we are reacting to a situation or a person, we can close the gap between the time of venting the emotion and recognizing that it was a reaction. In due course, we find we can recognize a reaction at the time it’s happening.

The idea of actually paying attention to emotions as they were happening, instead of being consumed by them, was novel when I first began to do it. I had never thought of watching myself, observing my behavior.

At first, each time I reacted to something, it took me a few days to acknowledge that a particular behavior had been inappropriate and to admit that I was acting out of lifelong childish patterns.

But as I became more practiced at watching myself, the time between losing it and understanding what had happened became shorter.

Then one day, though I couldn’t stop the feeling, I was able for the first time to observe while it was actually happening just how a reaction arose and possessed me.

I felt a rush of anger gush up inside my chest, like a volcano erupting. I felt my throat, shoulders, and arms tighten. I experienced my stomach beginning to knot. Though I couldn’t stop the reaction, I was aware for the first time that the feeling was in reality a reptilian reaction. It was coming from my primitive brain, not from my cerebral cortex.

This was an important breakthrough because until now I had justified my anger as an appropriate and rational response to a situation. I felt “right” to be angry about things.

But on this occasion I knew, while I was actually losing it, that I was reacting. Indeed, I realized I was reincarnating my family’s behavior.

It was time to use the awareness I was gaining to get a grip on myself. Realizing I was reacting opened the way to interrupt the impulse.

From this point on, instead of telling myself I was acting in a fitting manner, I tried to remain calm long enough to ask myself, “Could it be that I’m not being rational, that I am in fact reacting?”

For a brief moment before I was engulfed by my immature emotions, I sensed that I didn’t have to react. I suddenly realized I had a choice. I knew I could either let the emotion take me over, or I could calm myself and allow reason to prevail.

To interrupt emotional reactions required a lot of practice. As I became adept at watching myself, I discovered I was able to delay my reaction and even modulate it to some extent. Gradually, issues no longer set me bouncing off the walls. Little by little I was learning not to react.

No longer venting, I was holding onto myself. I was using my head instead of losing it. The drama began dropping away. A peace entered my life. It felt good to at last be in my right mind.

“It’s just that I feel so right on this matter,” I bemoaned. My tone was emphatic, emotional, laced with frustration and anger.

“Where does that feeling of rightness come from?” my friend asked.

We began to explore the feeling of rightness that welled up and overpowered my judgment. Why was it so important for me to be right?

I sat in silence, as if staring at a blank wall. Why was it important for me to be right?

After what seemed like several minutes my friend said, “You are having thoughts.”

I was indeed. My mind, which during most of the silence had been blank, had spontaneously jumped to my childhood.

The reasons for our dysfunctional behavior are within us if we are willing to allow them to emerge. Our inner being knows the source of our behavior, and what we need to do to change it.

But it’s not a cognitive understanding that’s helpful. It’s not a matter of analyzing a behavior, explaining where a behavior originated on a mind level. Rather, it’s a matter of identifying an emotional signature in our behavior—a signature that goes way back.

If we simply allow ourselves to bring our attention to an issue, staying with it and not blocking the feelings that arise—being very present with it in silence and stillness—the connections we need to our past will come, together with insight into how to handle the situation in the present.

But once again, let me emphasize that it’s not insight at a thought level that’s transformative. It’s awareness of how our emotional state arises and takes us over that counts.

“I was picturing my dad and my grandmother,” I said, “and some of my childhood teachers.” My eyes moistened. I was aware of being in deep pain, as if my heart were about to break.

My friend sat with me in silence, his eyes never leaving mine. Though he said nothing, he was never more fully present.

I sensed he knew what I was feeling, and his calm, supportive manner assured me that it was safe to feel what I had always been afraid of feeling—what, in my childhood, it wasn’t permissible to feel.

After several minutes I began to talk, my eyes flooding with tears as I recalled the formative years of my childhood. But it wasn’t recounting specific incidents, rehearsing them over and over, that was helpful. It was being in touch with the emotional signature of the events.

One of my clearest recollections of these years in my grandmother’s house was a feeling of treading on eggshells. I dreaded getting into trouble. And that feeling of treading on eggshells—that dread of getting called on the carpet—had followed me all my life long.

One minute I was being spoiled with toys, drowned in attention. The next I was being scolded for doing something wrong. It was always one extreme or the other—always lots of emotional drama. Consequently, I enjoyed little sense of safety.

Everything was a big deal. I was made “wrong,” and things had to be “right.” It always felt like I was appearing at the Last Judgment.

I was hardly ever gently given an explanation of what I needed to do differently. My behavior was always a moral issue. To make mistakes was unacceptable. I learned that getting things “right” was all-important, and that to get something “wrong” meant the descent of wrath and swift punishment.

It was the same in school. Not being able to add or multiply correctly was a major moral issue. It was as if, if you didn’t get it right, you were a reprobate, a rebel, and even downright evil. You were made to feel that you were deliberately getting it wrong, which brought on a beating. No wonder I sat petrified in class after class!

“Everything used to be such a big deal,” I told my friend. “Even when I was little, if I spilled my glass at the table, it was a major issue. I must be bad. If I was late in from play, it was a matter of life and death. I was made to feel as though I were the very devil. Ordinary things of life that don’t bother most people were all a big deal in my home and school. Everything had to be right.”

There were no minor infractions. Every time I was corrected, it was in such a way that I felt like crawling out of sight. If things weren’t “right,” there was hell to pay.

How to dissolve an emotional signature like the need to be right—the overwhelming sense that it’s morally “wrong” for something to be other than it ought to be?

As Namaste author Michael Brown explains, what it takes is simply sitting in stillness, eyes closed, connecting the in-breath and the out-breath, so that there is no pause between them. There’s nothing forced about the breathing. It’s just a matter of breathing in a flow that doesn’t stop at the end of each breath.

There is no need to attempt to control thoughts. All that’s required is simply being present in the stillness of breathing continuously, for perhaps fifteen minutes, until the emotion passes.

Anything in our life that we wish to see transformed calls simply for being present with it in this way. No mental gymnastics are required, no special techniques. Just being with the situation, aware, present.

All of that feeling that things are “wrong” and needed to be made “right” dissolved for me. I found myself becoming tolerant, compassionate, understanding of others.

Things were no longer a big deal. Being connected to each other in a loving atmosphere was far more important than all the issues that had, for years, generated drama in my life.

Whenever an emotional signature arises within us, all we have to do—all we have to do!—is sit with it in the stillness of connected breathing and presence. As we do this each time the issue comes up, its emotional signature will gradually dissolve, so that peace, joy, and love prevail.