The universe is a work being continually perfected; though unseen, it is justice, compassion in action. Those who resist and resent what comes their way -- who fight with its unending waves that rock their contrived sense of reality -- are actually the ones who live without real choice. They must serve their struggle to resolve the sense of loss that comes each time the world changes without first having consulted them.

Life does not come at us from the outside in, even though that is the way we've always seen it. Once we understand this, we'll see the mistake we've been making all along about the true meaning of strength. Currently, we have a list of things we want to overcome: our past; our failure to acquire what we believe we need; a pressing world that has it in for us. We've identified these...

We have an innate need to rise above ourselves, to open ourselves to higher influences... for one thing, because we understand that without higher influences, we're left to our own flu-like influences from which we don't get well, and that we are sick from following our own prescriptions! Our present condition is imagining what we need to do in order to get above ourselves...

We each have ideas about who we are, how the events in our lives should go, and how other people should treat us. We believe that if everything goes according to our plan, we will be safe. By the same token, anything that threatens the fulfillment of the plan is seen as an enemy. What might some of these enemies be? Other people who don't give us the respect we deserve.

What causes disputes between human beings? What is this business of "what I believe" vs. "what you believe"? Can we see that you cannot separate what you believe in from what you want? When I say, "I believe in this," and "I believe that you should be like that," what I'm really saying is that I insist you be what I believe you should be, because if you don't, we have war...

The secret that ends your fear of people, of situations, is the possibility of discovering that these people are as afraid of you as you are of them. What do you think would happen if you knew that the person you're afraid of is as afraid of you as you are of him or her? How do you think that would change your reaction? That man makes the cruel comment, that woman makes the cutting remark...

Topics covered: Discussion of Guy's new book Relationship Magic; What good is a spiritual practice if it can't be applied to my day-to-day life; People are brought into our lives for our mutual perfection; We don't really know much about real love; We bring unseen expectations into each moment; No one is perfect, but we can use our imperfections to help one another; We don't know how to use di...

Topics covered: Part of your spiritual work is to see that you do not know what your best interests really are; The conditions in life that seem to oppose us have actually appeared in order to help us realize our best interests; A negative reaction looks outside of itself in order figure out what condition or person should be blamed for its pain; The very act of blaming the condition you don't want strengthens the consciousness that created those conditions...

Topics covered: To say that these are unprecedented times is to forget the fact that human consciousness repeats itself over and over again, which means that the world has been in its current state many times before; Notice that whenever you are thinking about someone that bothers you, you are at war with that person; Whenever you struggle against the clock, in a rush to get somewhere and get things done, you are at war with time...

Topics covered: There is no such thing as the winning side of an argument, because the reason we argue with others is that we are in distress; The mind complains, "You are giving me an experience of myself that I don't like." And so we argue because that part of us is sure that we must change others in order to change our present experience. But our experience of life is nothing but the experience of ourselves.

Topics covered: Do our daily struggles with life serve us, or do we serve our daily struggles? The answer is that, presently, we serve our daily struggles; The individual components in nature often struggle against each other naturally in order to perfect nature as a whole; When something happens that we do not want, we typically struggle against the condition that seems to be against us.

Topics covered: Whatever remains concealed can never be healed. What remains concealed is the cause of the conflict we have with ourselves and others; Self-judgment guards the door to self-renewal, convincing us that protecting the old is preferable over the new; Revelation of similarity to your neighbor is what leads to compassion and the end of conflict...