When you begin to doubt everything you believe about your suffering, you will see that you never had to remain in the path of those destructive storms at all.
Many of us have perhaps had the experience of accidentally nodding off while driving on the freeway. After coming awake, we suddenly realize with tremendous alarm that we just fell asleep in a vehicle moving at 80 miles per hour. At that point we do whatever we have to do to make sure that we do not fall asleep again. Spiritually speaking,
There will be moments in our spiritual life in which it will feel as though we have nothing -- in which there seems to be no promise. It is during these difficult times that we will have to make a choice. We can do as we have always done in these moments of feeling empty and search for an escape through some form of distraction. Or we can choose to become truly conscious of the feeling, not be...
A Visit to Life of Learning...
Have you ever said something to someone not knowing until much later that it hurt that person? Why didn't you know that you hurt that person in the moment that you said what you did? You have within you the possibility of being aware of the need of another. In that moment of interaction with another human being, you were given -- as a gift -- the capacity to resonate the state of the person t...
We're all familiar with the general idea that in a moment of crisis a person ought to be able to remember what is right and true. We want to remember that there is an ideal aspect of our character within us that the circumstance we find ourselves going through has seemingly made disappear. We have all struggled the best that we know how to be the embodiment of that ideal, and there are definit...
How can we begin the process of transcending our own limiting self-centered love to come into a fully conscious and impersonal one? 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 th...
Every person knows what it feels like to be carried off by an anxious state, so you decide: when some anxiety comes along and takes over your life, are you an awake, inwardly centered person or are you an unconscious, outwardly driven man or woman? Which are you? That you're outwardly directed is pretty obvious. Why? Because that anxious state could not exist without your false belief that who...
There is something in us that actually enjoys feeling stressed. We must discover that we live with an opposing self. We can catch moments of opposition by coming back to ourselves.
How many times in a day do we find ourselves having gone after something that we wanted, only to find ourselves "gotten" or "done in" by what we have reached for? Then what happens? The crying, complaining, bitterness, blaming starts: "Oh, why is this happening to me? This isn't right!" We can't see how we actually participated in producing the moment in which we find ourselves compromised, an...
A young woman once decided that her best chance of getting hired by a company doing geological survey work in the Alaskan wilderness was to earn a private license to fly twin-engine planes. A few days later she began taking lessons from a wise old bush pilot, highly respected throughout the region for his cool and collected ways of dealing with the worst possible situations. After the mandato...
Clearly there is no peace in trying to forget you, so perhaps the answer to this affliction lies in refusing to accept a breath that doesn't take your name into my heart. Although I admit there is still some confusion as to the exact gain in this prescription, nevertheless there is some evidence of wisdom in it, and in that there is hope. For instance, of late I've learned that my mind and my...