Self-observation is the key to a higher order of awareness; it is how we learn to become inwardly vigilant to our own thoughts and feelings, even as they pass through us. When we can observe ourselves in this new way, our higher nature naturally prevails over any troubling thoughts or feelings that want to drag us down into their lower world...

What happens when we see things about ourselves that we don't want to see? In order to avoid looking at itself, the mind will seize on the anger, impatience, grief, loneliness, or anxiety it has seen... and it will try to explain it. It will take the initial darkness, the negative energy, and because it seems to be so bad, the mind will make something out of it that it can deal with...

Have you ever noticed that when you're under the cloud of some negative state, what you do to try to "make things better" actually makes the situation worse? Struggling to free yourself from your own negative reactions is a bit like throwing gasoline onto a fire, isn't it? Recognizing that you get trapped in this pattern of taking action that neither relieves nor rescues you from...

Do we not try to escape the stress we have by further imagining ways to relieve ourselves from the circumstances held responsible for it? And the more we do to create for ourselves an enclave in which we will no longer be confronted with the trouble, the more we isolate ourselves, and the greater the problem becomes because we increasingly resist anything not part of what we've..."

Topics covered: It is wise to seek immortality because time defeats all other ambitions; The greatest prize hidden within our inner life is victory over death. Uncovering the treasure is a matter not of intellectual knowledge only, but of awareness, relationship, participation and understanding; The desert in spiritual stories represents the endless useless struggle to escape from conflict, not seeing that the attempt to escape is the perpetuation of the conflict.

Topics covered: Genuine prayer is connected to something you have genuinely seen about yourself. The wrong kind of prayer, the selfish kind, is connected to the avoidance of seeing something true about yourself; Ongoing psychological pain is always the product of having mistaken who you are. "Hell is a state of mind -- ye never said a truer word. And every state of mind, left to itself, every shutting up of the creature within the dungeon of its own mind..."

Topics covered: We live under the government of an order of being that makes sure we do not understand that the Divine knows what we need before we know that we need it; We have wishes that we think are our own. But not one wish that we have originated with us; We have the capacity to manifest some of the things that we desire, but the things that we desire never come with the peace and fulfillment...

Topics covered: The last thing your mind wants is peace. The only thing that keeps you from understanding the real peace of Heaven is what you do not yet understand about yourself; The peace of Heaven is a "time and place" without "you" in it. It is not a time and place "you" are going to reach and be applauded when you get there; What is the most rare form of self-knowledge?

Topics covered: There is nothing in the universe that can stop you from learning the truth of yourself; Every moment of our existence is the expression of, and the possibility of completing "our" karma. There is no such thing as bad karma; Our consciousness sows the seeds of its own suffering, and then sets out to resolve the very conditions that it sets into motion...

Topics covered: The fallen state of humanity is such that it has fallen from the real into imagination, and imagination is where fear thrives; The fear in your life is inseparable from the life you have imagined; We have lived with fear for so long that we believe the lies fear tells us are true and necessary; There is a natural, necessary fear that is instinctual and has no sense of 'I' in it.

Topics covered: Everything that you suffer from psychologically is the product of living from an attachment to an ideal that you don't know you live from; The consciousness that reacts violently to events cannot be changed through its own reactions; We cannot change the world we see around us until we change the way we see the world; The pain of resistance isn't caused by the condition or person being resisted.