Truth wants you to know that it is never in your best interest to unconsciously suffer, no matter how inwardly convincing it may feel to you that you will be betraying yourself or someone else if you don't. The only way that any suffering feeling can prove to you that you need it is to hypnotize you with a flood of itself. Step back from yourself. Learn instead to listen to the quiet stream of...

The best time to practice going quiet -- to detect and drop dark inner voices -- is when the world around you is more or less already in a natural state of silence. So, early morning, upon arising, and just before you go to sleep, are the most likely times to yield the best results. But, as you'll no doubt come to discover for yourself, any time is the right time to go quiet. Find a place...

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,...

No one can hope to know the joy of true personal freedom without knowing the truth of spiritual peace. Freedom and peace are as kite and wind; the former remains grounded without the latter. This is to say that before we will feel ourselves being lifted above the conflict and illusions of this world, peace must become conscious within us. Peace is the foundation, freedom the form built upon it...

Have you ever wondered why it's said, "Silence is Golden?" Hidden in these words is a secret instruction by which a person can find a peace that passes all understanding. Silence is golden because, for the individual who is willing to remain in that silence with his or her own suffering, that person finds spiritual gold. The suffering in silence is the purification of the soul and the suffe...

The meditative life is not limited to sitting down someplace quietly, nor is it limited to someplace in time where we can control conditions so that we can experience something of a quiet mind. It can be said that meditation is the active relationship that an individual has with the whole of his or her life. Indeed, if we were able to see clearly enough into our own life, we would see some...

Isn't it true that the minute something happens, there is a reaction that takes place to the event, and the reaction forms as a stimulus by which we then want to figure out how to resolve this pain that we're in, fix the person, or change the condition so that the disturbance we're feeling will go away? This means that in the moment where there is disturbance, we are meeting the disturbance w...

A man who doesn't know his true identity does not know that he doesn't really know. The fact that he is confused, frightened and still searching for himself remains almost totally unsuspected by him because he has unknowingly assumed a false identity. This temporary, false self feels real because it is animated and driven along by the man's reactions as he seeks himself. The fact that thi...

Doesn't this make perfect sense? If we need to be rescued from something, then whatever is rescuing us can't be part of what it rescues us from. Said in a different way, you don't jump on a tiger's back to escape a lion. A terrified rabbit running from a fox only thinks he finds safety when a coyote offers him shelter. This shows us that any desperate attempt to escape a trouble usually leads...

Every person knows what it feels like to be carried off by an anxious state, so you decide: when some anxiety comes along and takes over your life, are you an awake, inwardly centered person or are you an unconscious, outwardly driven man or woman? Which are you? That you're outwardly directed is pretty obvious. Why? Because that anxious state could not exist without your false belief that who...

How many times in a day do we find ourselves having gone after something that we wanted, only to find ourselves "gotten" or "done in" by what we have reached for? Then what happens? The crying, complaining, bitterness, blaming starts: "Oh, why is this happening to me? This isn't right!" We can't see how we actually participated in producing the moment in which we find ourselves compromised, an...

Guy explains that one of the primary reasons why we don't change is because there's no space in our life. He shows how real change requires we agree to the stirrings and disturbances that are part of the full life. These stirrings and disturbances actually serve a purpose we cannot know in advance.