Only God knows why a flower can remain tightly wrapped up as a bud for its entire life, never opening, so that in a way it never fulfills the purpose of its existence. In the same way, only God knows why a human being can spend an entire lifetime closed off from his or her higher possibilities. But if for some reason that individual, regardless of age, has the "impossible" impulse to open in s...

Blaming conflict-filled feelings on any condition, or person, outside of yourself is like getting angry at your shoes for being laced too tight. So here is an effective inner life step designed to help you grow and 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...

Lock the following statement in your mind and try your best to never forget it: There is no such thing as a failed spiritual warrior who wanders onto the battlefield and is willing to meet what he or she must. Even if that warrior takes only one step before falling down and running away in fear, that warrior does not fail. You gain more in a moment when you are willing to meet what you must t...

You can have consciousness of life. The difference between just living and being aware of the fact that you are real life is so immense that it cannot even be compared. You have to be willing to know that you are alive, as opposed to just thinking about being alive. If you want to know about real life, you have to be willing to be alive, with everything that it entails. Presently we do not tr...

Nothing is set in real life, but we live from a mind-set that wants to get things settled. Just when we think we have everything taken care of -- when all of our ducks are in a row -- life seems to come along and place another demand upon us. In general, we would prefer that nothing interfere with our carefully constructed plans. What is the nature of a mind that is always scrambling to put e...

There is no one problem that a person has that is not the problem of everyone. The bottom line is that the only problem we ever have is that we hurt ourselves. If we had the choice, we would all obviously say that we would like to stop hurting ourselves. But the fact is that we run into problems--run into ourselves--again and again. So what is it that is blocking our wish to stop punishing our...

Love is a latent interior "hunger" we all feel through our longing to know -- deeply -- someone or something to which we are drawn. And Love understands that whatever we will agree to draw near to ensures -- given time -- we will come to know it; and then, transformed by Her magic through a marriage of a sort, we become as one with what was once unknown to us. Don't think this too...

Everywhere we look, people are concerned with essentially one thing: getting what they want, when they want it, and as fast as possible. The fires that fuel their appetite for this envisioned success create so much smoke that they lose sight of the fact that all they reap for their insistent sowing are the cold ashes of regret raked out of broken relationships. If we are ever to realize the i...

The wish itself -- to be a higher person -- comes to you from a higher place and is received in its inner equivalent within you. This means there's already an existing connection between the you that you want to be and the you that you presently are; between the new destiny you would have, and the fortunes you've known. All you have to do is stay on the royal road that has brought you up to th...

No one can hope to know the joy of true personal freedom without knowing the truth of spiritual peace. Freedom and peace are as kite and wind; the former remains grounded without the latter. This is to say that before we will feel ourselves being lifted above the conflict and illusions of this world, peace must become conscious within us. Peace is the foundation, freedom the form built upon it...

Starting life over again is the key to a new you. Never mind all of those thoughts and feelings that may be telling you this is impossible -- those inner whisperings that either deny the need for this self-newness or that scoff at its possibility. Brush them away with the following helpful insight: self-defeat in the past does not prove that self-victory doesn't exist. Defeat of any kind in li...

When those familiar feelings wash over us that we have somehow failed at something, or that we are sure to face defeat should we endeavor to claim some personal higher ground, we can do much better than allow ourselves to be carried away by these dark waves. We can call upon the following five light-filled truths to realize new self-victory. Study these friendly facts until they tell you why t...