As surprising as it may be to learn at first, the more "personal" is our peace, the more punishment we are likely to attract from it! Sometimes the simplest things show the deepest truths: Have you ever been in the midst of that personal peace called, "sitting in front of the TV with a nice pizza"? You know what happens next! The phone rings or a neighbor drops by and . . . Boom! One's slice o...

It is an extraordinary thing -- this engaging feeling that comes with simply remembering you -- even though I have no idea where you are. How is it possible to feel such an abiding tenderness for what I am unable to see? Let alone touch or possess? And yet! On mornings like today with such soft winter sunlight gliding through the bared branches and the air so cool and undisturbed, I'm moved...

As paradoxical as it seems, the reason most of us find no lasting peace in life is because our mind is forever trying to find something outside itself in which it can rest. This condition is not unlike the little fish that, unhappy with just swimming around, went in search of water -- its hope being that if it could find what it was looking for then it would also find what was missing from i...

As human beings we form relationships and then, when the form or dynamic of these relationships change, as they must, we blame these unwanted changes for our loss of peace. Such behavior is like getting mad at the wind that catches our hat and whisks it away. Our sense of lost peace, along with feeling the loss of one's freedom that was tied to it, has never had anything to do with peace with...

We have within us a new, higher vantage point -- a very special part of ourselves within which we may be at peace regardless of what goes on around us. This yet-to-be realized state of ourselves may be called conscious self-awareness. Through its power, instead of being pulled down into painful identification with the passing shadows of life, we can discover a life in a peace far above the rea...

The next time you run into some familiar blockage or begin to feel unsuited to face some new and difficult personal challenge, don't do what you've always done before. Don't try to think your way around it. You no longer want a way around your troubles because what goes around, comes around! What you want is to grow beyond the level of that disturbance. And to do that, you must not act from...

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...

Have you ever gotten angry at a knot? Maybe you couldn't get your shoelace undone, or clear that fishing line. A knot in a thin gold or silver neck chain can be especially difficult. When you fight with a knot you feel frustration. Now, if you think about it logically, clearly the knot has no intelligence of its own with which to thwart your intentions or make you feel angry. Yet when you figh...

When you begin to doubt everything you believe about your suffering, you will see that you never had to remain in the path of those destructive storms at all.

You have the Light to detect, dismiss, and to transcend the limiting influences of painful negative states such as doubt, worry, hatred, anger, and fear.

The next time something dark or disturbing tries to steal into you to wreck your contentment, do not consent to be drawn into its seemingly important considerations.

If we're interested in spiritual things, we gradually realize that what we really need is to understand this nature that is never satisfied.

We go through our lives in a continual dance of being filled with something that needs an answer, and then going out and finding that answer... only to find out that our answer wasn't quite the answer. Then, as we bring to ourselves whatever we thought we needed, it changes. Or, as we actually see that it doesn't fulfill us, then the thing inside of us that wants this answer changes. Slowly b...

Beginning this very moment, intentionally separate yourself from any rushing inner condition by voluntarily stepping out of it. Here's how...

Self-discovery -- and the new self-knowledge it generates -- has no limitations, no moment where there isn't the possibility for something higher to pierce the soul and so reveal that everything that once was is no more because something greater now stands there. This means that there is no end to what is higher, to what is ever-above you; and that the ground of this immeasurable state of sel...

It is unnatural for any human being to be dominated by anything. Your only true responsibility is to understand this higher fact. And your corrected understanding places you in the right relationship with all gloomy thoughts and defeated feelings; which is that you simply have nothing to do with them. We are not saying to act or pretend as though dark feelings don't exist. This is very importa...

Higher self-knowledge empowers you to realize the better, brighter life you've always wanted! The following four key lessons are taken from Letting Go: A Little Bit at a Time. Use their insights to help you let go of self-limiting patterns such as stress and anxiety in favor of a new order of consciousness that is the cornerstone of energy, clarity, and deep abiding love. --- Any confidenc...

Discontentment is a kind of psychic echo. In fact, whatever the unhappiness may be, it is only an inner echo that is "sounding" within us. As difficult as it may be to understand this at the present time, suffering only seems real. It has no real life. How is this possible? Our inner stress, strain, and pain feel real to us, for sure; but then, so do all of the fears we feel in the middle...

Learn to see the deception in any assumption that wants you to believe that there is no higher alternative to your suffering than to either run from it or simply endure it.

Looking for the power to be happy is not found in a person, place, possession, idea, or belief, but through the new understanding that your higher, permanent nature needs no power outside of itself in order to be in charge of an inner or outer attacker.

Before we can choose not to compromise ourselves, we must first become acutely aware of those thoughts of ours that may be holding some secret seed of self-defeat.

No anxious state could exist without your false belief that who you are -- your well-being -- is connected to something happening exterior to yourself.

When you want to know the powers that circulate through a quiet mind, you must take yourself to that place where this silent strength can make itself known to you. To go quiet, you must go within.

If anxious thoughts and feelings had any power to help us reach some place in life where, finally, we'd be released from the pain of always feeling rushed... don't you think we'd have reached there by now!...

We must stop trying to change the world we see, and begin the inner work of changing the way in which we see the world.

Learn what it means to let life shape you -- let God shape your life, your soul -- until you're in direct relationship with life.

Being at peace, and learning to live with quiet confidence -- even as the world spins wildly around us -- begins as we realize within us the presence and power of an interior stillness that neither needs, nor searches for, anything outside of itself in order to quietly know itself. During these last three months of the year -- as we watch the life force of nature withdraw itself -- we see fie...

The awareness of our living relationship with the present moment -- our willingness to consciously practice its presence -- empowers us to know what's best for us without having to think about it.

Which would you rather do? Be identified with all the things in life that come and go... so that this lower sense of self compels you to cry and worry and fight to keep everything in place? Or, would you rather be free of that lower nature that lives to cling... so that you're increasingly able to just let what "comes and goes" do just that... come and go with no further muss and fuss? We've...

Just as we need to keep an eye on the kinds of friends we keep around us, so must we also remain aware of the circle of "friends" we keep within us.

Each time we feel an emotional pain, we should use that as a signal that we've made a mistake, that we've crashed and now need to find and try another new way. The problem for most of us is that we rarely allow ourselves to learn in this way. We have hundreds of experiences each day in which our expectations crash into reality. Whenever this happens, we have a close encounter of the truthful...

To be able to see any life event -- good or bad -- as a vehicle to help transport us from our present level of understanding to a higher one requires that we develop a new relationship with unwanted events in our lives.

The real power behind faith is found in the Light within us that shows us what's true, and what's not, about who and what we are in reality.

Negative states, all dark energies that enervate us, only succeed at draining us because they are capable of making us see mentally and emotionally charged images of past defeats.

We work very hard to correct conditions that are really no more than secondary outcomes, and not the real problem at all. We fight a daily war to protect ourselves against enemies that, in fact, never are responsible for the pain we feel. The unhappiness we feel is the bitter fruit of a lack of self-understanding. In our confusion we do many things that are self-harming. We do not deliberatel...

There is a lower world where fears are real -- where all things, and everyone living in this world, are unknowing participants in the fear that's found there. In this darker realm, the thing feared is inseparable from the nature that fears it, so that any action taken by this nature to end the fear it feels becomes the seed of its next fearful state. For example, say that you're worried that...

It's a little-known secret that our experience of life in any given moment is a direct reflection of what we actually value in that same moment.

We can't change others -- or the purpose of any given moment as it unfolds -- but we can work to place one less demand upon both.

The mind asleep to itself is a "divided" mind. One part of us wants what another part of us feels guilty about wanting.

The real adversary in our lives, that proverbial thorn in our side that leaves us aching and angry, and then sends us looking for someone to blame, is not what we have always believed. It is not something "out there." It's something "in here": an intimate enemy.

The only way we can be released from any painful sense of false responsibility is to see that it is based in a false belief.

As paradoxical as it seems, the reason most of us find no lasting peace in life is because our mind is forever trying to find something outside itself in which it can rest. This condition is not unlike the little fish that, unhappy with just swimming around, went in search of water -- its hope being that if it could find what it was looking for then it would also find what was missing from i...

Each time you can awaken yourself from a self-produced nightmare and pull the curtains closed on its performance, you will reclaim your natural confidence and calm.

Eventually we reach the point where we start to realize that we are not going to find peace, contentment, happiness, strength, fearlessness -- all of the things that in our heart of hearts we wish we had -- outside of us.

More often than most of us care to tell, we run into unwanted moments that seem to challenge the very fabric of our being. Almost anything can be the proverbial straw that breaks us: a friend's betrayal, loss of health or a loved one, unexpected financial strain. Even a shattered dream can throw us into a dark nightmare. Certainly, no one gets out of his or her bed in the morning thinking, "To...

The more we believe, as we are inclined to do, that there exists something outside of us with the power to make us happy and whole, the more attached we become to these imposter ideas and those deceptive desires that weave into our hearts.

The things we put first in our life, our moment-to-moment choices in life, are a direct reflection of what we value most in that moment.

To go quiet, you must go within and become an impartial witness to the life of your own thoughts and feelings.

One of the marvels of our lives is that they can undergo a natural healing process when our wish for an awakened consciousness allows the Truth to shed its curative light.

The reason that the "truth sets us free" isn't so much because of something that we're able to do with it, but rather through the always shocking discovery that, as we are at present, there is very little we can do that is real.

The only thing that can happen to you when you're in the wrong place is a wrong thing. But even when you find yourself in a "wrong place" inwardly, you don't have to remain there.

The "hard" part of this practicing of presence in the now is that our habitual mind, the false self, wants to know itself through one thought or another.

Expectations are so common to our sense of self and its well-being that we barely even realize we have them until we run into something that dashes them.

Whatever form your resentments may take, they wreck only you... not the one you resent. So, here's a key thought to help you release this self-wrecking inner state: Holding onto some hurt or hatred -- over what someone may have done to you in the past - makes you that person's slave in the here and now. If you're tired of being a slave to a painful relationship out of your past, this study an...

Here are just ten small places in our lives where we are trying to do the impossible -- struggling to do what cannot (and need not) be done -- and where, because of our misunderstanding, we unknowingly hurt ourselves.

The instant we become aware of any negative thought or feeling wanting us to embrace its agitation - not only must we drop it on the spot, but we must also drop any familiar sense of self that has appeared with it in that same moment.

If we are truthful about our life experience though, it is obvious that as long as we believe we have something to lose because of our identification with any temporary exterior condition or circumstance, we remain subject to every outer condition.

Within each of us, in our hearts and in our minds, there lives a special kind of light. In truth, it is everywhere.

Whenever we will put ourselves on the side of what we know is true, then Truth takes our side, lending us what is noble, needful, and divine.

All through the ages the Wise Ones have spoken of an invisible kingdom--a timeless ground known as the Now--that will confer to those who realize it a peace that surpasses all understanding.