How many times will you have that dreaded feeling that "it's all been for nothing"... even as you've "learned" from your mistakes? You may be growing in the addition of psychological information that you carry and refer to about yourself, with lots of facts why you'll never run into trouble again (you know the drill -- how it always starts with how much you see about what you didn't see before...
The first step to breaking out of any rut in life is to no longer enable the parts of us that keep walking in them while wishing they weren't so deep.
Whenever some dark storm appears in us, we must awaken to ourselves and bring ourselves back into the Now.
It's well known that storm-tossed waves often expose new treasures along the shoreline; there is unexpected wealth to be collected by those who know the secret value of rough seas. And yet, even though most of us have little tolerance for anything that "rocks our boat," the truth of the matter is self-evident: *Unwanted moments introduce us to parts of ourselves that would otherwise never get...
The real reason people remain captives of unwanted circumstances in their lives is because they've yet to realize this great spiritual secret: Resistance is negative attraction. In other words: the longer we dwell on what we don't want in life, the larger grows that dark dwelling place in which we find ourselves living. ~~~ You need not answer to any disturbance within you. Any form of res...
As life pours itself out in the stream of passing time, and we run into challenges seemingly greater than our ability to answer -- each of these encounters "asks" this question of us: "Are you willing to change (who you have been) in order to realize a higher possibility of yourself?" And though moments like these trouble us because of their uncertainty, here's why we should be very grateful...
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...
Whenever someone hurts us with a pointed remark, what we see isn't whether or not there's truth in their words; all we "see" is our wish they hadn't said anything at all! In such moments we are absorbed by a familiar negative reaction whose one desire is that the unwanted event just go away. This resistance acts within and upon our consciousness as a "blinding" and binding force, so all we can...
In days long past, seekers of Truth spoke of a mysterious "lost chord." Perhaps you are familiar with this timeless spiritual idea? Roughly speaking, the search for this lost chord centered on an idea not too dissimilar from the one that drove seekers to try to find the legendary philosopher's stone. If someone could discover, group, and then intone certain musical notes together -- at the rig...
Each and every event in our life brings with it a kind of gift just for us, providing we know how to receive it. This priceless offer isn't about ways to empower ourselves through possessions or greater position in life; it is presented to us to help free us from the stress and worry born of the false belief that we need such riches to realize the timeless value of ourselves. What is this gif...
The real cause of our unhappiness has nothing to do with which way events or relationships turn. Even though it often feels like it, dark inner states aren't born in the actual unfolding of any present moment, but are born afterwards, from unconscious resistance to any event that somehow opposes our wishes. It is clear that the source of our suffering isn't that life fails to live up to our e...
When we meet a moment before us that challenges us in some way, we are not meeting some immovable, transient object. In reality, we are meeting nothing more than our understanding of the event. Wherever we are, whatever we're going through, we meet our own understanding. The dimension -- the breadth of any event transpiring before us -- is actually a reflection of the level of self that sees...