Unwanted life lessons repeat themselves again and again. Why? Because we keep talking to ourselves about them. Whether they happened two minutes -- or even 25 years ago -- we talk to ourselves about things we regret or feel guilty over. In fact, the mind almost never stops talking. Something triggers a thought that is the left over, undigested energy of an event that was meant...

Whenever painful events happen, they tend to fall on only one of two sides of a person. The first side is the denial side. When turning this way, refusal rules. Regret, self-pity, and endless explanations generally follow. Or, the unwanted moment falls on the angry side, where the turning is to burning. Resentment rages. Hatred and feelings of betrayal mushroom into....

Any wave of resentment, anxiety, or fear that comes to wash you away is nothing more than a kind of psychic residue left over from who you once were.

Many times, darkness is the medium, sorrow the seed, and the subsequent humility conceived in these trials is the divine garden in which our soul flowers.

An inner place of safety exists. If we stand in that new position, no dark feelings can affect us. That position has always been there, waiting for us to find it. It is the place where the True Self resides. But we have mistakenly believed that only two options were open to us: to either stand and suffer, or run away and suffer, with our problems in constant pursuit. We always listened to the...

The self-defeating desires that drag us around belong to a nature that always feels incomplete. Nothing this false self tells us to do does one thing to loosen its hold on us. Fighting with it -- as we have done in the past -- only slays "half the foe," while giving in to it leads nowhere but to more self-recrimination. This torment, and all other suffering associated with its kind, is needles...

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.

Trying to resolve the pain within us by holding others accountable for it is like looking out at a field we have planted on our own property and wishing, every day, something other than what grows there would take hold and flower. If we wish to have true harmonious relationships with others, then it is we who must change. We must assume responsibility...

When those familiar feelings wash over us that we have somehow failed at something, or that we are sure to face defeat should we endeavor to claim some personal higher ground, we can do much better than allow ourselves to be carried away by these dark waves. We can call upon the following five light-filled truths to realize new self-victory. Study these friendly facts until they tell you why t...

Whenever we find ourselves in some "unwanted" part of ourselves, perhaps reliving an old heartache or caught in the throes of some irrepressible anger, old fear, or unyielding worry, part of this unwanted moment includes our certainty that we're trapped in this condition. And compounding our confusion over feeling ourselves captive in this way are all of the attending negative inner voices. Th...

There is a hidden part of you that knows, without thinking about it, how to always be perfectly relaxed, carefree, and in command. This higher intellectual and emotional intelligence is to your present thoughts and feelings as is the mighty oak to its own spreading branches. Once you come into contact with its perfect strength and power, you'll wonder how you ever lived without it. Great mas...

The real reason people remain captives of unwanted circumstances in their lives is because they've yet to realize this great spiritual secret: Resistance is negative attraction. In other words: the longer we dwell on what we don't want in life, the larger grows that dark dwelling place in which we find ourselves living. ~~~ You need not answer to any disturbance within you. Any form of res...