Mechanical Nature

You don't have to believe that there's a fearless world above your present mind. You can live within its perfect order any time you choose. Make this choice for your own freedom starting right now.

Bound up as we are within the closed world of our own thoughts, we see virtually nothing other than what the false self of the moment wants us to see. By contrast, in real life, everything is new.

Learn to detect negative feelings that imply there's nothing that can be done about the way you feel at the moment.

There was once a young prince who, having reached the age of majority, left home to live on a grand estate given to him by his father. He was told that if he ever needed help he was to put a light in the uppermost tower window, and his father would send a special horse and carriage to carry him to safety. However, his father also warned him that an evil wizard, an enemy of the kingdom, lived n...

The will to be free belongs to that special part of us able to remember that we are here on earth to grow beyond the limiting influences of our own unawakened nature; it knows we are not created to participate with anything that causes us to suffer unconsciously. Our task is to awaken ourselves to this Higher Will within us that won't be compromised. How is this done? We must remember -- now a...

In this world that you and I live in, response is request. We can slightly enlarge this idea by restating it this way: The way you respond to life is also a request you make to it. See how the next few examples prove this important discovery: Someone walks into your home or office and says something to you that upsets you terribly. You respond with a negative state, continuing to brood or...

Almost every kind of unhappy feeling is the result of mistaking the partial for the whole. What this means is that when we don't see the whole picture, we are likely to act in a way that is self-defeating. One example of this would be that terrible sinking feeling that comes with learning too late, after you've become upset, that things weren't the way you were so sure they had been. That, in...

While experience may serve as the path to self-knowledge, still it remains the lesser half of the path to self knowing.

Student Talks: 05/01/2026 - Just as the light of a candle can’t be moved by the shadows it casts, so is there within us a Light that can reveal and observe a reaction without being identified with it, let alone be moved by its shape or character.

Topics covered:  You can't be at peace with the moment itself until you are at peace with yourself; It is inevitable that everything in nature is always being acted upon and being completed through that action. Why is that not true of us when it comes to a relationship with the Divine? What is interfering with this "Divine inevitability"?; What is it within us that sets boundaries? We end up as prisoners locked within the very boundaries that have been set, and then fear anything that threatens to trespass. We become walking "No Trespassing" signs.

Student Talks: 05/16/2025 - The only thing good about any negative reaction is the revelation of how useless is that (level of) suffering to change anything about our present nature, let alone the condition it convinces us to blame for its pain.