**As a result of my deepening interest in truthful ideas, quite a few of my friends feel I have gone off the deep end, and I have noticed a growing separation between us as I work more and more for my own spiritual freedom. It is not that I don't care for them, but rather I am becoming less concerned about the things that have always driven all of us. My fear is they will eventually want to ha...

One of the most shocking and necessary discoveries along the path is that what we love does not love us. We are filled all the time with powerful feelings and emotions that seem to lift or otherwise provide purpose and self-worth. It is not too much to say that most of these inner states are lies -- hopelessly incomplete of themselves, and seeking completion in some secret opposite that they g...

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...

Blaming conflict-filled feelings on any condition, or person, outside of yourself is like getting angry at your shoes for being laced too tight. So here is an effective inner life step designed to help you grow and develop greater spiritual strength: No matter what happens, never blame anyone -- or anything -- for the way you feel. Rising above the blame game is the same as learning how to be...

When faced with the prospect of living with an emptiness that seems capable of swallowing us whole, most of us elect to do the only thing we believe is possible under such dire circumstances. We start right away working out fresh ways to fill ourselves once more. The drill is familiar: find someone or something new with which to make another beginning. Do whatever is needed to bring an end to...

How many of us spend our precious time and energy fuming over what others may have done to us? Unseen in the steam of our heated emotions and churning thoughts is the one inescapable fact that we are the secret prisoner of anyone we wish to punish. And the more we would punish this person, the less freedom we have to be at peace with ourselves. Here's a beautiful lesson in invisible justice,...

There is at work in us an undetected nature that will not allow the cause of our pain to pass so that healing may take place. Can we see that we have parts of us that just won't let go of being angry with someone who got angry with us? But that's not all! Can we also see that these same smoldering parts of ourselves would have us believe that being on fire is the best way to get over being bu...

Suffering doesn't prove that someone else is wrong. What it does prove is you will go to any lengths, including self-destruction, to prove that you are right. ~~~ Instead of always asking yourself why doesn't so-and-so see how wrong they are, learn to ask Is what I'm feeling about that person right now good for me? Or them? ~~~ See the upset not as an exterior circumstance to be reme...

Without reverting to their lower level, how do you get people to stop making their hurtful, cut-down remarks? One of the reasons people pounce on or attack us the way they do, is that they are feeding off of us in many different ways, especially when we return a negative energy. For an amazing experience, try sometime consciously refusing your own negativity in the face of someone else's.

You can spend your time struggling, in vain, to make others into what you want them to be, or you can see the inherent flaw in thinking this way, and -- rather than trying to change others to suit your needs -- see through the false idea that someone else is responsible for your fulfillment. You can let go of those resentful feelings toward your job, because the treadmill isn't what you are d...

A big part of our inner work in all of our relationships involves remembering this key idea: whenever we are not present and properly attentive to ourselves, we may be sure the false self is busy attending to something we'll be paying for in the days ahead. Disconcerting, yes; but there's no denying it: there are unconscious parts of us that feel good about getting us to do wrong! Whenever we...

We are wrongly led to believe that life makes us into the kind of person we are. The truth is that the kind of person we are -- our life-level -- makes life what it is for us! This is why nothing can really change for us until we see that our unhappiness isn't connected with the event, it is the level of it. Let's look at this a little more deeply. We believe that we meet events and that thos...