Resistance

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...

Everyone wonders whether or not there is one Great Secret for truly successful living. There is. And it is not a secret. It has been quietly, steadily telling itself right in front of us all along. We just couldn't hear it over the clatter and chatter of our own secret demands. Listen quietly for a moment. Everything can change right now. Learning to hear this Supreme Secret is no more difficu...

We are created not to know ourselves by what we think about, but to know ourselves within God's ever-present, perfectly changing life. The challenge for us is that we are habituated to thinking about ourselves and deriving a sensation of ourselves based upon the images that we consider. What happens to us when we feel the blows in life? In those moments where Life is actually trying to bring...

Lesson 14: Once we understand how to use them... life's many unwanted twists and turns are no longer seen as being just isolated, disjointed experiences under whose yoke we are born to be burdened, but instead are realized as unique opportunities whose rewards are the lessons that can lead us, if we will follow, up to and through the successful education of our soul. Lesson 17: When...

The only thing most of us know to do when life takes an unwanted turn, bringing us what we don't want, is to take a turn for the negative ourselves. And when the circumstance in question really makes a wreck of things, not only do we summarily reject the event seen "at cause," but for good measure we often will turn our wrath upon our own lives, pronouncing them "not worth living"! Such flas...

We are not created to resist anything... we are created to grow through everything. Resistance to life kills the process of spiritual development. When we resist what life would show us about ourselves, we effectively close the door on the Light that wants to help transform us by showing us the things we don't know we harbor in our soul.

The reason we resist virtually all endings in our life -- wherein we feel as though something has been wrongfully taken away from us -- is because these same unwanted moments leave us feeling terribly empty inside ourselves. In truth, it is this overwhelming sense of emptiness that we detest, and not the changing condition itself that we so habitually protest. So when things naturally come t...