Identity

Before we can experience the truth of a higher state of consciousness, before we can stand on the ground of ourselves that is the secret stuff of Reality, we are asked to quietly be who and what we are in the Now.

Seldom do we know a greater need for making a fresh start than in those mind-numbing moments when we find ourselves feeling thrown for a loss. These feelings of loss often leave an unconscious, invisible residue of fear which tends to taint every area of our lives with distasteful timidity, born of the neurotic suspicion that in some way, life is conspiring to take something away from us.

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...

When you look at a flower in springtime, standing there with its beautiful petals and leaves, can you understand that flower is not the life alone that you see coming out of the ground? That flower belongs to a much greater life than the individual expression that you behold and say, "Isn't that beautiful?" You could never experience the radiance of the flower or utter those words if it...

Topics covered:  "You keep looking in the wrong places for what you are hoping to find when you get there in a time to come; The condition that we see is not responsible for the conflict that we feel; When reality challenges what we have imagined conditions should be, so that we can be who we think we have to be, we fall into conflict and suffering."

Topics covered:  "Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it." -- New Testament; Nothing in nature grows in a straight line. There is no straight line because there is always a creative force is acting upon the new creation. The force of creation, nor the creation that it is acting upon, are ever the same; The negative states that seem to come out of nowhere will tell you the reasons for their appearance, which always includes some form of "I'm innocent, you're guilty." Negative reactions will tell you why you are the way you are.

It is impossible to let go of any painful thought or troubling feeling until we see the parts of us that are secretly clinging to it.

Topics covered:  Stop making life so hard for yourself and others. Stop believing that it is other people and circumstances that make life hard on you; We go to war with people whenever they deny us something that we think we are owed; Do your solutions bring an end to having enemies? If they did, the world would have stopped making war long ago.

Topics covered: Our lives are currently predicated on dealing what is unreal, the pursuit for answers to suffering that is blamed on outside conditions that seem to be responsible for the suffering but in reality are not; Every image that comes into your mind to lend you a sense of security also comes with a second force built into it that will prove it is unreal; A false sense of self, a false identity...

Topics covered: What is the point of an experience if it carries us right back to where we started?; What is the point of experience if not to learn and grow inwardly through the experience?; You cannot separate how you experience any given moment from the corresponding sense of yourself in that same moment; We are presently always giving ourselves a familiar sense of ourselves moment to moment...

Topics covered: Individuals who understand the futility of trying to save their own life -- through thought -- will gain their life; We must learn to use the presence of psychological pain as an invitation to not just question the things we believe are valuable, but to launch an investigation into how we ever came to that conclusion; Whatever we have become identified with over the...