There is an immense reason why we do not develop spiritually. It is because when it is time to act, our intellects become frozen and get locked up in the trap of "should I" or "shouldn't I.". Instead of properly acting on impulse in the present moment, we have become people who always defer to a conflict that exists in thought. Every impulse to act is the same as the opportunity to discover a...

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 an ancient idea, perhaps best expressed in the New Testament, which states that before a human being can hope to awaken, he or she must have not enemies. When you lie to someone, you have automatically made an enemy because you will always resist that person out of fear that he or she will expose your lie at any given moment. Therefore, not only have we made an enemy when we lie, we a...

The following six lessons contain special understanding about the nature of invisible pressure-filled states that cause human beings to run themselves ragged. The clearer we can see the reasons for why our lives are always in such a rush, the sooner we arrive at the true solutions that allow us to slow down, take command, and realize the relaxed pace of Real Life. Study each lesson separately...

When all you have is yourself, you have to be afraid. And yet if you really had possession of yourself, fear would not have any power over you. And if we're really honest with ourselves, we can see that presently we lose ourselves all of the time. We are always trying to hold in place who we think we are supposed to be. That is not freedom. Being yourself is not the same thing as straining to...

Doesn't it feel at times as though we are all shipwrecked on an island of confusion and stormy emotions? And that over time we've all but forgotten it's possible to live any other way? Where our days are spent either hiding from the storms, or building inadequate shelters to protect ourselves while doing nothing real to get rescued? Yet, something in us knows that there will never be an end to...

Before you can step out of the rush and into your own life, you must first see that while anxious, hurried feelings often lend a temporary sense of self-importance, these same racing emotions actually rob you of the power you need to be self-commanding. A brief investigation will confirm this finding. Self-command begins with being able to choose your own direction in life. And whether you're...

Every person knows what it feels like to be carried off by an anxious state, so you decide: when some anxiety comes along and takes over your life, are you an awake, inwardly centered person or are you an unconscious, outwardly driven man or woman? Which are you? That you're outwardly directed is pretty obvious. Why? Because that anxious state could not exist without your false belief that who...

There is something in us that actually enjoys feeling stressed. We must discover that we live with an opposing self. We can catch moments of opposition by coming back to ourselves.

When untouched by the mind we can receive the whole of an impression and thereby be changed by it. Most of the time what we do is involve the mind in the impression by naming and describing it, and because of this we do not receive the whole impression, and therefore we are not changed.

In the still uncharted realms of mind and heart, there exist parts within every person that are drawn to seek out relationships with thoughts that are self-wrecking: for instance, when we become transfixed by our own troubles, turning the image of some fear-producing picture over and over in our mind. And who hasn't found himself drawn into an argument where the antagonistic voice in his head...

We must learn what it means to reach for a whole new place within ourselves; to find and stand upon a Higher Ground from where it's possible to see that our present thoughts and feelings reveal only a fraction of the whole of our possible experience -- instead of being what now defines our whole world for us through their conditioned and incomplete perception of it. Reversing this unconscious...