Living from our present life-level, we are almost always nervous about what's going on around us. Why? Because we still live with the mistaken notion that who we are is somehow affected or determined by what happens to us. Events may happen to you, but you are not the event. Just as clouds are not the sky, you are not what moves through you. You are not who you think you are.
Our True Self is not a person. It is a great spirit. And it is part of a ceaseless flow in which the idea of "good" and "bad" only exists because in that flow has been born a certain creature, given an imagination that has created a self in the name of itself. And there you have all of the problem. When you resist what life brings and don't accept it, all you're really doing is....
Living within us dwells an order of being that knows, without thinking about it, what is authentically good for us. The problem isn't that this higher level of being--with its natural, calm command--is actually missing just when we need it most. The real problem is that we forget it!
Just as our bodies grow healthy or not, according to what we take into our mouths, so too do we grow into wisdom, strength, or grace according to what we attend to with our mind. Our thoughts, like all energetic life forms, attract to themselves natures like themselves. The thoughts of a fellow not only flock together, but seek and are sought out by similar invisible creatures...
We are meant to go through a transfiguration on this earth, a change internally that leaves our character like nothing it was before.
We can and must begin to understand the spiritual life before we can live it. But we can't begin to understand something that is above us until we begin to see it.
According to our wish and willingness to give our love to another, there returns to us -- in greater measure than given -- the love we have given. It is, quite simply, the secret of the ages: Love rewards the lover. Isn't it true? The more we love someone, the more love we come upon in our own being; and the more we experience these elevated states in ourselves, the higher we long to go!...
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...
The unsure self that not only looks for, but attaches itself to codependent relationships -- cannot possibly be the real you. Let's see why this statement has to be true. The real you is that silent "I" within you whose awareness understands -- without having to think about it -- that you are on this earth (going through all of these events) to grow, to realize ever-higher stages of your self.
Real hope for the world begins with discovering what it takes to become a new human being, because when you are no longer who you were, but rather the new person that you have been meant to be all of your life, then all of those things that were connected with who and what you once were, cease to be the whole of you. Which means that every single one of your relationships has changed, even if...
Unlike lesser-level creatures that are not conscious of their own nature -- and that cannot choose any other world of experience apart from the one they are drawn to by their own lower nature -- we, as human beings, are unique in creation. We are created to be self-conscious. In spiritual terms this means we may have an awareness of any of the infinite number of qualities that form the charac...
There's an ancient truth tale about a young man who yearned to study with a renowned master of archery. It was widely spoken that this teacher had achieved perfection of mind. His skill with the longbow was reported as second to none. Admittance to this master's school presupposed a potential student was already advanced enough to strike the small center of a target from a great distance. But...