A spiritual risk is any action we will take based upon our willingness to challenge our own certainty that our present state of consciousness represents the full measure of life's possibility. Here is one simple example: Maybe we feel as though no one understands our situation or that no one is being sensitive to the pressure we're under. During these times most of us feel the strong need to c...

It is never the event or the condition that holds us captive, but it's the way we think toward it that creates our sense of captivity. Help yourself to the keys of self liberation hidden in these next ten insights. Take the time you need to let each concentrated idea sink into your heart and mind. The truths you are about to meet are actually alive. If you embrace their healing presence, t...

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...

We can never hope to be free as long as any part of us struggles with, or suffers over what others are doing, have done, or won't do with their lives. Besides, if we could remain aware of the often-compromised state of our own character, that is, how we still do those things to others that we don't want to do, this awakened conscience would stir in us a new need. Rather than worrying about whe...

Real self-independence is the fruit of an awakened inner life. And just as fruit on a tree must develop into fullness following a certain order of natural events, so too is there a natural order of self-realizations that lead up to winning your own life and living it as you please. Every step along the way to this higher independent life is both the challenge and the reward. The challenge is...

The fall of fear begins with our heightened awareness of fear's presence. Out of this higher level of self-consciousness comes something as mysterious as it is grand: the spiritual intolerance of fear. This deep, nonnegotiable disdain for fear comes to us in advance of the powers we need to win our freedom from it. And the arrival of this supreme strength -- that ultimately leads to lasting...

There is one heartache we know all too well. And each time it makes its unscheduled, unwelcome appearance it becomes that much clearer we've never really lived without the presence of this grief. It's that familiar to us. But, as quickly as this disturbance in our being can appear, it vanishes again, which leads us to believe that either we've overcome this feeling, or that it's passed. But we...

Sometimes when you rush in, I feel as though I am standing upon the bank of a river rising up in me, and that you are its sudden waters coming over me. Caught up as I am in these moments, all I want is to be carried away. I want to offer myself, toss myself into this upwelling; but I don't know where to find the edge of these waters in order to leap. In these times I feel as the parched eart...

Whenever we love someone (even a natural wonder or common creature), we know that our own higher emotional state awakens in us a kind of exalted energy; one that seems to melt barriers and that brings us into relationship with our beloved in ways beyond our understanding. But that's not all: not only does this unseen force of life grant us access to the secret regions of our beloved's heart bu...

We have an essential need to be at peace. Part of that essential need to be at peace is to know that we are in the right place, at the right time, doing the right thing -- and to know it in such a fashion that nothing can come along and convince us otherwise. There is only one way that can happen for us, and that is through the idea of being a true individual...

What do we need to do to rise above the limitations of our present understanding -- limitations that, seen or not, play a role in our daily dose of heartache? The answer may surprise you! Truth teachings throughout the ages tell us that healing the hidden and hurting places in our heart begins with becoming conscious of them. We are taught that we cannot free ourselves of anything that we refu...

Our experience of life is intimately connected to the way in which we view it, and this view changes from moment to moment depending upon what we are relating to within ourselves in each moment. When we see only our own ideas about why we're feeling stressed, and they're telling us how we're entitled to be miserable, misery makes up the circle of our lives. But when we actually see, within o...