Blaming conflict-filled feelings on any condition or person outside yourself is like getting angry at your shoes for being laced too tight. So here's an effective inner life step designed to help you grow and to develop greater spiritual strength: No matter what happens, never blame anyone -- or anything -- for the way you feel. Rising above the blame game is the same as learning how to be in...

Our relationships with one another are often a source of distress. In general, the principal form of conflict we experience with others has to do with some form of consideration that we feel they are not giving to us. We often suffer from thoughts like these: "She is not being respectful enough." "He is not as kind as I want him to be." "They just don't care as deeply as I do." However, if we...

Happiness, love, peace, compassion, and contentment are timeless states of being in the Now. In their original principle they are without form, having no beginning or end. These forces of the Living Light exist in themselves and have no cause apart from their celestial source, much as the sun exists apart from the life-giving light that radiates from the surface of its hydrogen heart. But for...

Our lives are meant to be bright, noble, and ever ascending. This promise of our true potential is made good in us by fulfilling our possibilities and not through the interminable struggle of trying to prove what is impossible. Most of our sorrows are the stressful offspring of trying to be something we have no real need to be; they are born for attempting to do...

Wouldn't you agree that no real friend of yours would ever want you to hurt yourself? And wouldn't you also agree that if you did have a trusted friend that you later found out had lied to you, you wouldn't trust him again -- at least not the third, fourth, or fifth time? You know the saying: Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me! For the sake of our studies, let me add one mo...

What's wrong with knowing that someone or something outside of me is responsible for making me feel unhappy? Over and over I fall into the trap of wanting to lash out and blame other people for what seem to me to be injustices in their actions. How can I learn to suppress that immediate reaction to point the finger at someone else? After certain negative events take place, I think I'll regain...

Consciousness of any unwanted condition in us must precede its correction, just as the rising sun dismisses the fear hiding in the darkness of night.