We don't know much about real feelings, and in order to learn more about them, we must first discover what are not real feelings. When a thought suddenly comes to you, such as the thought of eating your favorite food, and your mind begins to go through all of the details associated with that thought, the desire for that food is strengthened by the image that the mind has produced. And also str...

What does it feel like to deny something? Is it a good feeling, or a bad feeling? We all know that it is a bad feeling. When something happens that we do not want, and we then deny the event, it feels bad. On the other hand, what does it feel like to want something when we envision something positive? We can easily see that when we are envisioning what we want, we feel good! In order to unders...

If we see how much of our unhappiness is self-created, through being inattentive to our own interior life, then accordingly, we can learn to re-direct our attention, placing it where we will within what is right and bright. But, there is only one way to realize this reversal: we must work to see how wrongly directed attention works against us. Perhaps a thought pops into your mind about a pr...

The more we imagine a fearless life created by conditions outside of us, the more compelled we feel to try and control those same conditions. Our fear being that any change in them will return us back where we started: searching for a way to be fearless. Yet, the more we resist change, the more afraid we become of it. We find ourselves applying more and more pressure to life in order to escape...

There is an extraordinary paradox in the spiritual life that any sincere aspirant must encounter. The paradox is that anyone who is a sincere seeker wants Real Life, Truth, but the very act of wanting it is produced by having imagined what Real Life is, and then we attempt to imitate what the mind has imagined for ourselves. The conundrum is that you can't want what can only be given to you,...

In days now thought distant to us but perhaps not as far as one would imagine, the queen of a great country said to her daughter, "Constance, come here and sit down next to me. Even though you are still but a child, you are now old enough to receive the gift I have been holding for you since the day you were born." Constance met her glance with a big open grin that fairly shouted, "Tell me mo...

Unconscious conflicts, in dialogue form, play themselves out in our mind by painfully reenacting various scenes from our past; moments gone by in which we either know, or sense, we were compromised by our own weakness. If these inner dialogues were left to themselves as they popped into our mind, they'd be as powerless to disturb us as an echo is to change its own sound. Where we get into tr...

If we were to see someone trying to warm himself on a winter's night by snuggling up to a color photo of a fireplace, we would easily recognize this person as being deluded. We know that the glossy paper image which he clings to for life-sustaining heat is powerless to do anything but mock his obviously oblivious mind. But this unfortunate man can't see the futility of his own misguided acti...

Catch every thought that wants to make you the star of the moment. See that talking to yourself about "What does this mean and how am I going to get through it" is actually self-importance having its way with you. Reach for another relationship with life in which you don't have to think incessantly and painfully about how each and every moment affects you and your imaginary reputation.