Spiritual Power

What is it that makes us feel powerless when someone does something and it punishes us, or we hear some unwanted news? Let's examine it. Something happens that I don't like, and what am I looking at in that moment? I'm not looking at the thing that I don't like. What I'm "looking at" is the whole condition of myself that feels challenged, threatened by, overcome through whatever it is that it sees. But what does it see other than something that it resists?

We're always trying, one way or the other, to grab and maintain something that will make us feel safe and whole forever. The pursuit of that wholeness, of that security, is through what we commonly call "powers." When we think of our security, we think of the powers that we must have to maintain it -- whether it's trying to please other people, trying to have, keep, and gain more possessions, or struggling to get some kind of control over a relationship or...

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...

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 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...

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...

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...

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...

Whatever seems impossible, or otherwise impassible in life is inseparable from the extent of our resistance to it; a fear inherent in the way we're conditioned to see such moments. To realize the nature of this fear is to be released from it, no matter when or how it presents itself along the Way.