Martha says one reason we humans are a strange species is because we love to make jigsaw puzzles—beautiful pictures that we cut up into tiny pieces and disassemble, and then put back together. And we don’t like them to be too easy!

In this episode of The Gathering Room: Solving the Puzzles of Our Lives, Martha talks about the way problems in our lives are like puzzles, and how it often can be more joyful to have a puzzle than not to have one. These puzzles are the life situations given to us by circumstance.

“If we can get into a state of relative relaxation,” Martha says, “and then look at even a very scary problem in our own lives, we can start to appreciate the kind of puzzles our brains like to solve.”

To learn how to approach the problems in your own life like a jigsaw puzzle—and solve them in a way that supports your awakening and can help transform the world—tune in for the full episode. It also includes Martha’s guided Space, Stillness, and Silence meditation.