As difficult and shocking as it may be to consider, within us dwells a certain level of unconscious desire that loves... to not want. It has but one purpose: This part of us "lives" to resist anything that doesn't live up to its expectations. Why would anything want to live like that? Because what this dark nature likes most of all is being negative!

One way or another, we all suffer over things that we can't stop doing to ourselves or to others. Adding to the conflict inherent in self-compromising behaviors is the fact that it's frustrating beyond belief since most of us (in some way) have built a business, worked, and succeeded in some place - won accolades, impressed our friends - and we've weathered storms.

Ask yourself: how many times have I won the object of my desire, only to find out that it wasn't enough? How familiar do the following statements seem to you? "This is the greatest thing that's ever happened... but what if..." "I love you... but..." "This moment is almost perfect... all it needs is..." The prize won, whatever its name, doesn't end the feeling we have of needing...

The anticipation of something desirable is always sweet in conception, which would be great if it weren't for a certain fact about the nature of longing itself: it appears within us, at first, by itself, bringing with it the promise of just what we need to make everything right. But appearances are not always what they seem; for standing directly behind it, as it were...

How can someone be given so much and -- rather than being grateful for the abundance of these gifts -- be so negative over a single element in the midst of them? Closer examination of such a situation, and the inconsolable level of self that gives rise to it, may show us that we have more in common with this discontented character than not. It's impossible for us to...

Expectations are so common to our sense of self and its well-being that we barely even realize we have them until we run into something that dashes them.

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...

We live from a bottomless basket of endless wants that drive us everywhere, including crazy! Hoping to find comfort and life direction in your wants is like trying to find shade under a swarm of stinging flies -- while it may be cooler, you also have to keep running. Your pleasure is your pain. Real pleasure is not the opposite of pain, it is the absence of it. Think about it. What you re...

Everyone wonders whether or not there is one Great Secret for truly successful living. There is. And it is not a secret. It has been quietly, steadily telling itself right in front of us all along. We just couldn't hear it over the clatter and chatter of our own secret demands. Listen quietly for a moment. Everything can change right now. Learning to hear this Supreme Secret is no more difficu...

There is one essential reason why there is so much constant heartache and war on this earth, and why conflict has continued as it has down through the ages. The answer may surprise you. We do not understand our own pain -- our suffering. Six-and-a-half billion human beings live in ignorance of their pain. But this is not to say that we live pain-free. In fact, without exception, human beings...

No one can hope to know the joy of true personal freedom without knowing the truth of spiritual peace. Freedom and peace are as kite and wind; the former remains grounded without the latter. This is to say that before we will feel ourselves being lifted above the conflict and illusions of this world, peace must become conscious within us. Peace is the foundation, freedom the form built upon it...

In days now thought distant to us but perhaps not as far as one would imagine, the queen of a great country said to her daughter, "Constance, come here and sit down next to me. Even though you are still but a child, you are now old enough to receive the gift I have been holding for you since the day you were born." Constance met her glance with a big open grin that fairly shouted, "Tell me mo...