Almost every day I receive a letter, an e-mail, or phone call from an aspirant who wants to know, essentially, the following: "What must I do to succeed spiritually?" Or, in a slight variation on that theme: "What's the right way to do what I must in order to awaken?"

The truth is that letting go is very simple and, above all, natural; as natural for you and I as it is for a tree to shed the heavy, sun-ripened fruit that clings to its branches. Why? Because both man and tree, in fact all living things, are created to drop what is no longer needed. For the tree, the falling fruit carries its matured seed to the ground. No unnatural force is necessary. In a similar fashion -- that is to say, under higher but equally exacting laws...

At some point, our appetite for a life that will satisfy or stimulate us can no longer be fulfilled by the life that we see around us. It just doesn't work anymore. We've tried and tried to find ways to feed ourselves, but what we have found (mostly) is that with all we've done from ourselves based on how we look at life, we never feel "I don't need anything more than this right now."

Letting go and spiritual growth are as rain is to a field of wildflowers: we blossom as beings only as we release ourselves from what is self-limiting. But why do this kind of work within ourselves? Even though it's obvious, it needs to be stated: we struggle with whatever we do -- with whatever personally compromises us or our contentment in life -- so that we might realize a greater...

There are these moments where a person is introduced to a great clarity that the world they have been looking in, in order to find themselves through, is incapable of revealing the worth they are looking for. This first shock (have you had it, by-the-way?) is when a person realizes, "Uh oh. This is a dead-end. Oh no." And when a person has enough of these moments..."

Any true self-aware state must include the presence of a humility that tempers the temptation inherent in all forms of self-evaluation; otherwise, what we might call self-awakening is really just a form of secret self-admiration.

Topics covered: You are relieved from the false responsibility of trying to fix yourself or others when you understand the true root and meaning of the disturbance; The problem is not what you see in the mirror. The problem is that there is something in you that believes that what you see should not be there; Truly outgrowing something is not the same as imagining some other new identity to grow into...

Topics covered: There will never be anything that we ever discover that was not already waiting in our consciousness to be revealed; Everything that is waiting to be discovered was made to be discovered; Whenever you have an impression of any kind, what you are really experiencing is your own consciousness; Part of boredom is the belief that one has already experienced every impression that is possible...

Topics covered: What we really want is an unimaginable experience of an unimaginable new level of Being; True teachings are about a person all the time being born into a new higher level of consciousness that the level below knows nothing about; You must depart from the lower level of consciousness and all of its trappings in order to enter into a higher level of consciousness...

Painful thoughts, feelings of regret, the fear of some dark tomorrow: all point to a "distant fire" as the source of our suffering, even as they blow smoke in our eyes to ensure we don't see that they are what's burning us in any troubling moment.

Topics Covered: This world cannot answer what the soul seeks in order to know itself; The only times we resolve to make a request of God is when we are troubled; Because we think we see the source of our suffering with clarity, we also think we see with clarity the solution to it; We need true self-knowledge, if we're willing to receive it; The lower level of consciousness that we presently...