Whenever we can't understand the nature of some unwanted situation we fall, by default, into the hands of a nature whose answer to this ache is always the same: get negative and then try to protect ourselves from anything that can't be otherwise controlled. The rest takes place in us on automatic pilot:

Until the peace and pleasure found within yourself is equal to or greater than any consolation found outside of yourself, then your power to be patient, loving, and profitable in every moment is, at best, conditional.

Almost every kind of unhappy feeling is the result of mistaking the partial for the whole. What this means is that when we don't see the whole picture, we are likely to act in a way that is self-defeating. One example of this would be that terrible sinking feeling that comes with learning too late, after you've become upset, that things weren't the way you were so sure they had been. That, in...

In days long past, seekers of Truth spoke of a mysterious "lost chord." Perhaps you are familiar with this timeless spiritual idea? Roughly speaking, the search for this lost chord centered on an idea not too dissimilar from the one that drove seekers to try to find the legendary philosopher's stone. If someone could discover, group, and then intone certain musical notes together -- at the rig...

Topics covered: Our struggles to find freedom have not done anything other than set up the next series of conditions that we will find ourselves struggling against; Freedom has nothing to do with overcoming the conditions that we blame our pain on. What we must overcome is the level of consciousness that feels itself to be apart from the conditions that it perceives to be outside of itself; Useless struggle is battling with conditions that seem contrary...

Topics covered: Though we are not usually aware of it, we live within a field of forces that is perfectly organized; Your hope rests in being the willing recipient of the revelations about yourself that are always being given; We are not here just to serve nature. We are created to serve a greater good; When you are complaining about your life, you are participating in the futile attempt to bring order...

Topics Covered: God enters as self-love exits; You cannot separate useless suffering from the level of consciousness that produces that same suffering; When the real truth about suffering is revealed, most people run from it; Why else would we try to escape our suffering unless we believed that there was a way to do it?; Resistance to pain is not the same as the pain being resisted...

Topics Covered: If the Kingdom of Heaven is within, then why can't we see it and why can't we enter into it? The Kingdom of Heaven is another level of consciousness that can't be seen with physical eyes, and there is no awareness of the Kingdom of Heaven when we're filled with resentment, ambition and anxiety;There must come a point in our spiritual work...