Between our known negative reactions towards those who we perceive to have offended us, and that healing unknown Love that restores us to the truth of each other, is hidden a kind of conscious changing ground... an inner realm whose entrance is gained by willing intention to Love, and whose sanctuary is won through self-sacrifice. Have you ever been so upset, so disturbed by someone, that i...

However expressed in us - from the lowest level of sensual life pushed along by pure desire, to that incessant drive to make ourselves special in the eyes of the world, to those loftier ambitions of longing to be an instrument of the creative life, whatever its form, be it lower or higher - it is Love that moves us. It is Love that guides us. It is Love that we seek and find. How? Because it i...

Do you remember the opening lyric to the classic song "Love and Marriage?" If not, allow me to refresh your memory: "Love and marriage go together like a horse and carriage." Along with its memorable melody, this particular song has endured the test of time because hidden in the heart of its simple lyric is a celestial law about the power of attraction. If you recall, the rest of the lyric go...

Blaming conflict-filled feelings on any condition or person outside yourself is like getting angry at your shoes for being laced too tight. So here's an effective inner life step designed to help you grow and to develop greater spiritual strength: No matter what happens, never blame anyone -- or anything -- for the way you feel. Rising above the blame game is the same as learning how to be in...

The fall of fear begins with our heightened awareness of fear's presence. Out of this higher level of self-consciousness comes something as mysterious as it is grand: the spiritual intolerance of fear. This deep, nonnegotiable disdain for fear comes to us in advance of the powers we need to win our freedom from it. And the arrival of this supreme strength -- that ultimately leads to lasting...

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...

We have in us, the way we are, this idea that somehow or other we are going to be the ones who make the world that we see work. This notion runs very deep and is strengthened in us, in part, by what is its partial truth. So we're very reluctant to see that for all of these years, and all of the things that we've been doing -- with ourselves and for ourselves -- that every other day we still se...

Real power isn't the ability to imagine and implement an endless series of new solutions to old problems, but to awaken the higher understanding that allows us to transcend the need we have to live with any painful problems at all. Which would you rather have: a big fire hose with a hydrant and a fire to put out every day, or a life without fires in them? But what we have to examine here is...

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...

The chief cause of why our lives so often wind up in the hands of others is not that they are superior or that the world is too strong for us, but that we don't want to face the uncertainty and aloneness we think we are too weak to bear. ~~~ The conscious refusal to go along with what your weakness wants you to do to escape its uncertainty is what invokes and finally delivers real inner co...

There is a hidden part of you that knows, without thinking about it, how to always be perfectly relaxed, carefree, and in command. This higher intellectual and emotional intelligence is to your present thoughts and feelings as is the mighty oak to its own spreading branches. Once you come into contact with its perfect strength and power, you'll wonder how you ever lived without it. Great mas...