The moment I feel resistance, the moment I feel that contraction inside of me, I must understand that I am being introduced to myself. I've been brought to the bear, to touch the bear! That anger, that rage, that impatience appears in us. You and I know we have these states in us. We can dress up and appear pretty and appear like we're in control of ourselves, but every last human being...

Our task, if we want to be free human beings -- if we want a life in which we no longer carry around with us "what he did," "what she didn't do," "what never worked out" -- begins with discovering that there can be no real freedom for us until we understand the nature of the tyranny of the past that still lives within us. One of the main areas of this unchallenged dictatorship that still holds...

How many times will you have that dreaded feeling that "it's all been for nothing"... even as you've "learned" from your mistakes? You may be growing in the addition of psychological information that you carry and refer to about yourself, with lots of facts why you'll never run into trouble again (you know the drill -- how it always starts with how much you see about what you didn't see before...

When we are dominated by any negativity, be it some consuming fear or heated anger, we may think we are in command of ourselves as we rush to judgment or lash out at the world, but a simple question reveals another reality. Who, in his or her right mind, purposely sets themselves on fire? The answer is obvious. No one deliberately defeats one's own best self-interests. This much we all realize...

When we turn on a faucet connected to a hose with a small nozzle at its other end, we know from experience that we have to keep the hose in hand, otherwise we will likely get soaked chasing down the runaway end. What happens is that the water pressure, as it passes through the nozzle, transforms our ordinarily tame garden hose into the equivalent of a tethered rocket. With this picture in min...

Our sense of self, the way we experience ourselves, is very much connected to the widely varying states of emotional energies that come into us and that seem to shape the nature of our individuality. But the fact of the matter is, there is no such separate self, at least not the way we presently experience it. There are just these ceaseless states of energy and the fleeting sense of self they...

No one really wants to talk about it, but the truth is there is a kind of evil spell hanging over each of us and our world as well. In fact, part of this global spell is our denial of its existence. It is called suffering. Everyone does it -- believing that their suffering somehow benefits them. That's how the spell works. Why else would anyone punish himself with unhappy feelings unless he ha...

If one day you bang your elbow and seven years later the same spot still aches, and now radiating pains are appearing in your fingers and shoulder, you would start to suspect that something in your body's system was amiss! You would conclude, virtually beyond any doubt, that your original injury never healed properly. By the very fact of its continuing presence in our body, we intuitively kno...

There is one incorruptible law, a cornerstone truth in the foundation of all relationships, that must be realized as being true for each of us if we wish to help ourselves and others grow in what is good for all. And since this law represents principle, there is no escaping its perfect justice. The wise person comes to love this law because through it he is granted freedom from wanting to hurt...

Topics covered: In the world of imagination there is no heaven, there is only hell disguised as heaven; The only thing that has authority over you is what you look to for a sense of self; A machine can never be free because it can only do what it has been originally programmed to do; A machine can only work within the confines of its own content; Freedom from the machine already exists...