A. Dharma practice is about letting go. Letting go of our desires and aversions driven by this sense of self. This is a lovely ideal, but when we come to put the theories into practice and begin to taste how practice works, then we can have a few shocks as to what we’ve let ourselves in for. Our life begins to change, and also the aspirations that we previously cherished. We discover that when we begin to let go of our attachment to our desires, those very desires very often begin to fall away as well. We discover that those desires weren’t for fulfillment in life, but were there for another reason, and that was to solely enhance the self. Now we are learning to let go of the self, certain life aspirations, as we had thought of them, begin to recede into the background as well. This can result in a sense of fear and loss. “What is life all about, if it isn’t about pursuing what I want?” can be the cry. There will be emptiness and loneliness. To let go of self-motivating desires will be like dying, we will feel sad and desolate at our loss. But we learn to trust the Dharma, and stay with what is a basic existential experience. If we have faith and trust in the Dharma, through practice we begin to hand ourselves into that ‘dying’, to find a rebirth begins to take place. A rebirth that isn’t self-possessed, but a rebirth that is truly mysterious. It is mysterious because it is our true self, and that true self is spacious and spontaneous, and beyond the cycle of birth and death. The true self that is fearless and warm-hearted.