We all know what it is like to be held captive of the little things in life -- those petty concerns and small desires that steal their way into how we look at our lives and pit us against anyone or anything seen as trying to take away our anticipated desire. Here is a short list of these little troublemakers that often make big trouble for us whenever we mistake them for being our friends: *...

Reality is very different from our distorted ideas about it. For instance, there are many parts of us that are secretly afraid that should we earnestly reexamine our ideas about life we'd just stir up some things better left alone. However, if we don't stir them up, we'll never find out that these things we're afraid of are nothing more than "ghosts" created by our own minds. The following sto...

No one succeeds in life who lives in fear. Fearlessness is first the will to proceed in spite of conditions, and then it becomes a consciousness fixed in us that is beyond conditions. Real success is a fearless state of being in a conscious relationship with an Intelligence that always achieves its ends in spite of changing conditions. The success that our present nature looks for is to try...

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...

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...

The following may shock you, and I hope it comes as just that. Everyone practices prayer twenty-four hours a day . . . only neither do they know they're praying, nor do they know (and this is the real problem) what it is they're praying for! And this fact of life includes those people who say, "But I don't believe in prayer. I don't have a spiritual practice." A moment's consideration of the...

Whenever you come upon a healing idea or a rescuing truth, it is almost always a surprise that you could have missed something that was so obvious for so long. Do you know the feeling? More than anything else, a glimpse of a Timeless Truth is a lot like rounding a bend and suddenly seeing something you know you knew a long, long time ago; like discovering all over again a special place you onc...

There was once a little creature, and it was on the branch of a mighty oak. This great oak was the father of the forest. The little creature was sitting there sighing, and from time to time crying a little bit, and finally the old oak couldn't take it anymore. "Little creature, what is wrong with you?" The little creature was surprised. He said, "Well, I'm not sure. I just can't make it all co...

Do you feel this tug in your heart to transcend yourself, to be free to journey into a place of infinite renewal? To discover what is unfound within and therein to know its Secret Founder? Good! Because what pulls on you from within in this way is trying to get you to let go of yourself. For the majority of us, what we consider being renewed has nothing to do with what is real renewal. Most...

How many times have you found yourself thinking you'd like to develop a new skill or sharpen an old one? Maybe you've wanted to learn another language or play a musical instrument; further your education; or get up out of your easy chair and do some catch-up on that correspondence you've been putting off for weeks! But in each, or at least most, of these instances, before you can even get sta...

Unlike lesser-level creatures that are not conscious of their own nature -- and that cannot choose any other world of experience apart from the one they are drawn to by their own lower nature -- we, as human beings, are unique in creation. We are created to be self-conscious. In spiritual terms this means we may have an awareness of any of the infinite number of qualities that form the ch...

The only thing that holds us down is what we don't yet know about ourselves. This insight explains why our ability to learn the truth about ourselves, to increase our level of self understanding, is the same as being empowered to raise our own life level. If we want to grow inwardly, free ourselves from the ties that bind, we must find new ways to learn the truth about ourselves. These higher...