Our real "problem" with others isn't that they won't or can't give to us what we want from them. As we're about to discover, the true seed of discontent lies deeper than this. The short writing you're about to read is intended to help shed light on the real source of our unrest in our relationships. ----------- The less we learn to long for -- or depend upon -- Special understanding from o...

When someone acts thoughtlessly towards us, and we react negatively towards him or her, it is a similar thoughtlessness in us that responds. In other words, our own hostile reactions take no thought for anything outside of what they call into account for their suddenly heated existence -- so that the only awareness we possess in these times is that low level of cognizance that possesses us, ma...

There is one essential ingredient missing in most of our relationships -- one that is definitely required if we wish to continue in our own development and help others to do the same. What is this powerful catalyst that only we can provide for each other? Room in which to grow. We can help others reach higher by simply agreeing, consciously, to give them space to go through their changes ev...

What is immortal? It isn't a person's face or a passage of music. It is not the things themselves, but it is that which produces those things. It is the actual genesis of God's love. We don't have to look for this love. It's the very core of us. But until we give our lives to the awareness of this never-ending genesis of love taking place within us, we have only facsimiles of love. We don't ha...

It is our fear of being alone and in doubt, of wanting to feel certain that what we are doing is right, that compels us to seek the approval of others. So this tells us that the chief cause of why our lives so often wind up in the hands of others is not that they are superior or that the world is too strong for us, but that we don't want to face the uncertainty and aloneness we think we are to...

Compassion starts with the understanding that every human being on the planet looks different from us -- because physically we are different -- but inwardly we all live in the same pool. We all have pain and pleasure, we all share emotions that move in waves through that pool. People may live on the east bank of the pool so that the waves they know are different from the waves we know on the...

The first step in harmonious relationships is simple: We need only realize the spiritual truth that we cannot meet someone whom we are not like in some way, even if we don't actively express what we don't like seeing in him or her. The deception is that we're sure we're unlike everyone except for those who match the images we have of ourselves. And so it goes that we live from -- see our lives...

There are parts of us that would rather be punished by unkind people than have to spend one minute being alone, because the only way these same parts in us can exist is if they have someone to resent or somehow fear. In this case we remain in these ruinous relationships because the fear or emptiness we feel in even considering leaving them seems to be too much to bear on our own. Here's the k...

We're often led to act against ourselves by an undetected weakness that goes before us -- trying to pass itself off to others -- as a strength. In effect, we pretend to be something we're not -- a commonly accepted behavior these days. But any time we feign anything, we do so out of fear that without that "persona" to protect us -- to make that impression we want -- we won't get what we want.

Too frequently it seems our lives are under the power of things outside of us and beyond our ability to deal with: we feel like we are prisoners in one way or another of an unfair social system, impossible work conditions, an unforgiving past, or a failed relationship. Even trying to assemble a build-it-yourself bookshelf that doesn't know it "goes together with ease" can lock us away in the h...

Right within us, as an unseen aspect of our True Nature, resides the entire range of relationships that the universe has to offer.

We all know what it is like to be held captive of the little things in life -- those petty concerns and small desires that steal their way into how we look at our lives and pit us against anyone or anything seen as trying to take away our anticipated desire. Here is a short list of these little troublemakers that often make big trouble for us whenever we mistake them for being our friends: *...