Real self-command dawns within us as we realize that reliving the past is powerless to change a present misunderstanding.
Before we can learn to free ourselves from our own fearful reactions to unwanted events, we must realize just how worthless fear actually is -- especially when we turn to it to protect us from what are essentially bad dreams wrought from the darkened works of our own imagination! When it comes to these stormy moments in life, what we resist always persists. In truth, it is our not wanting to...
Imagine for a moment what your life might be like if you never again were to pick up a complaining thought or feeling. Think of how your days would flow without carrying the additional weight of those inner voices always telling you, "I'm too tired," or "This is too much for me!" The weight of the world would be replaced by a new sense of freedom. Fresh, new energies would flow. If this is th...
The more we imagine a fearless life created by conditions outside of us, the more compelled we feel to try and control those same conditions. Our fear being that any change in them will return us back where we started: searching for a way to be fearless. Yet, the more we resist change, the more afraid we become of it. We find ourselves applying more and more pressure to life in order to escape...
Fear's power over us is nothing more than the way it causes us to forget the truth of ourselves, which is this: we are created to eternally transcend the limits of our present nature, to transform who and what we have been in the very moment it ceases to serve the good of us. But, because we have forgotten this or -- more accurately speaking -- because we are asleep to its power in us, we ar...
We are deceived whenever we find ourselves feverishly thinking through "all the possibilities" stirred up by a fearful moment, because the only possibility any of these fearful thoughts hold is which one of them is about to make us its prisoner. ~~~ The seemingly scary condition, whatever it may be, is not the problem. It is your reaction that is fearful. This is why if you will become...
It is our fear of being alone and in doubt, of wanting to feel certain that what we are doing is right, that compels us to seek the approval of others. So this tells us that the chief cause of why our lives so often wind up in the hands of others is not that they are superior or that the world is too strong for us, but that we don't want to face the uncertainty and aloneness we think we are to...
As we are coming to see, within each of us dwells a Light -- an awareness capable not only of observing the host of invisible forces that forge life itself, but whose conscious interaction with them changes them as it will. It is through this higher order of ourselves that we are empowered to learn the truth about ourselves. And here the word truth means not just intellectual self-knowledg...
There are parts of us that would rather be punished by unkind people than have to spend one minute being alone, because the only way these same parts in us can exist is if they have someone to resent or somehow fear. In this case we remain in these ruinous relationships because the fear or emptiness we feel in even considering leaving them seems to be too much to bear on our own. Here's the k...
We're often led to act against ourselves by an undetected weakness that goes before us -- trying to pass itself off to others -- as a strength. In effect, we pretend to be something we're not -- a commonly accepted behavior these days. But any time we feign anything, we do so out of fear that without that "persona" to protect us -- to make that impression we want -- we won't get what we want.
There is no brighter gift, no greater potential given to we human beings, than the presence of a timeless Light within us whose power makes all things possible. Its celestial character knows we have not been created to live as the captive of any fearful condition, let alone those we unconsciously create for ourselves. This ever quiet, always present Light goes before us at all times, as doe...
We can either spend our lives fearful of any unwanted event that comes along to challenge our sense of self -- or we can use that same situation to help set ourselves free. Presently we see whatever troubles us through the eyes of a false nature that believes protecting itself from what it fears is the same as being fearless. The only way this idea makes sense is if we think that avoiding a pr...