Our fears and worries, our ambitions make something of us, don't they? The fact is, everything makes something of us because there's something in us that makes of it what is does, which is the real meaning of the old expression: a tempest in a teapot.
Surely we've known certain "perfect" moments in our lives. But who hasn't been in the middle of a dream vacation, without a care in the world, when--kaboom! In spite of the abundance around us, we're suddenly negative, deeply distressed simply because something or someone fails to please us according to our expectations! Or how about those moments when--regardless of how many of our friends...
Much of our time is spent identifying the so-called cause of our discontented states, and the rest of our time is taken up trying to change our unwanted situations into what we imagine will better suit our pleasure. Of course this description puts a kind of positive spin on what amounts to one's never-ending whirl of wishes, but the facts are that these dreams of a better time to come do not o...
We go through life looking for approval from others. This unending search for approval runs deep inside of us as we unknowingly nurture a relationship with the idea that if we could just be accepted, then little by little we would come to know who we are. We actually buy into the notion that if we could get enough people to approve of us, then this ache in our soul that is always trying to fig...
Day in and day out, our minds are literally swamped -- socially, culturally, economically -- with new ideas, fail-proof programs, promises of special places... things that, if we could only acquire them, would quiet our restless minds and hearts. So it goes that most of us are always running after something to quiet that nagging sense of feeling as though we're incomplete. But repeated experie...
Are failures in life inevitable? Does the Higher Power, once attained, see to it that we only succeed? Try to understand the difference between living from something within yourself, whose nature is contentment itself, and living from those parts of yourself that are forever seeking contentment. For the man or woman who persists with the wish for Truth/God to be first in life, there reall...
Why is it that we will challenge and then work to change the world's opinions as they concern us, but we never question our own beliefs no matter how much personal pressure, stress and anxiety they may produce? For example, we wouldn't dream of diving for sunken treasure in our bathtub because we know that the best we can hope to find there are a few plastic pearls. And yet we still dive headl...
There is an endless hole in the heart of most of us; a pit that demands our faithful daily service and that causes us, in our compulsion to fill it, to be pitiless towards those who stand in the way of this endless ambition. Most of us will spend our lives as slaves to this psychic abyss, driven in one form or another to satisfy in ourselves what can only be satisfied by our continuing struggl...