In this world, it's possible for you to find physical gold, but without winning the war within yourself, this wealth could not do anything for you other than perhaps produce a more comfortable place in which to continue your struggle with old conflicts. However, there is an inner gold you can find whose possession fulfills you, regardless of your external circumstances. We can call this inner...

Doesn't this make perfect sense? If we need to be rescued from something, then whatever is rescuing us can't be part of what it rescues us from. Said in a different way, you don't jump on a tiger's back to escape a lion. A terrified rabbit running from a fox only thinks he finds safety when a coyote offers him shelter. This shows us that any desperate attempt to escape a trouble usually leads...

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...

If you watch animals in the wild, one thing is obvious: The nature of an animal and its natural experience of life are indivisibly related. For example, deer attract biting flies. In the high heat of summer you won't see one without the other, and I have seen deer driven nearly crazy by these pests. They have no choice but to suffer this seasonal torment. An animal's nature attracts to it the...

One thing is certain: whether in our waking life, or in the dreams that visit our evening's rest, thoughts and feelings fill our every present moment. But just because you can feel or sense all of their diverse characteristics -- such as worry, fear, impatience, courage, or compulsiveness -- doesn't make the "you" that experiences these movements real -- any more than standing under the ca...

Real self-independence is the fruit of an awakened inner life. And just as fruit on a tree must develop into fullness following a certain order of natural events, so too is there a natural order of self-realizations that lead up to winning your own life and living it as you please. Every step along the way to this higher independent life is both the challenge and the reward. The challenge is...

There is one heartache we know all too well. And each time it makes its unscheduled, unwelcome appearance it becomes that much clearer we've never really lived without the presence of this grief. It's that familiar to us. But, as quickly as this disturbance in our being can appear, it vanishes again, which leads us to believe that either we've overcome this feeling, or that it's passed. But we...

It is a Law, not of man's or of woman's, but of life: Before you can have a different life -- before you can be happier, wiser, more at peace, and in quiet command of yourself -- you must first be different. Being is everything. What is Being? A moment's consideration helps determine that everything around us has some form of Being. Why is this true? Because all physical forms -- whether ani...

Have you ever wondered why you're so easily upset by the unexpected? It's not really you who feels shaky when situations shift without warning. It's who you think you are that feels threatened -- but you don't have to go on feeling afraid. Beginning right now, with some patient self-investigation and the aid of a few higher facts, you will discover that you are not who you think you are. T...

We must learn what it means to reach for a whole new place within ourselves; to find and stand upon a Higher Ground from where it's possible to see that our present thoughts and feelings reveal only a fraction of the whole of our possible experience -- instead of being what now defines our whole world for us through their conditioned and incomplete perception of it. Reversing this unconscious...

The biggest problem facing us as individuals today is that we have all been caught up in the race of looking for relief. Our time would be spent far more profitably looking for strength. When caught in a fierce storm, why scramble to find a cave at the foot of the mountain when the same energy can be used to climb? There is a choice. You can tremble within the cave, or live above the tempests...

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...