Suffering

There is a kind of "evil spell" hanging over each of us, and our world as well. In fact, part of this global spell is our denial of its existence. It is called suffering. Everyone does it -- believing that their suffering somehow benefits them. That's how the spell works. Why else would anyone punish themself with unhappy feelings unless they had been tricked into somehow perceiving self-hurt...

We can begin to free ourselves from negative states when we understand the truth about their power over us.

I'm sure we can all agree that no intelligent, conscious person would ever intentionally hurt themselves. No one would choose to ache. Yet the fact remains that all of us do hurt ourselves every day with bursts of anger or fits of depression or anxiety. Even at the simplest level, there can be no doubt: fear and worry take an immeasurable toll on our health and well-being. So, then, knowing in...

The wish itself -- to be a higher person -- comes to you from a higher place and is received in its inner equivalent within you.

We are at our core a creature of the stars: beings whose original and celestial stuff is not only born of light, but also intended to live unbound.

When you begin to doubt everything you believe about your suffering, you will see that you never had to remain in the path of those destructive storms at all.

Trying to resolve the pain within us by holding others accountable for it is like looking out at a field we have planted on our own property and wishing, every day, something other than what grows there would take hold and flower. If we wish to have true harmonious relationships with others, then it is we who must change. We must assume responsibility...

Nothing seems harder to accept than the fact that we are responsible for so much of what proves to be unnecessary suffering. But we must challenge this involuntary, often intractable refusal to consider such ideas. The truth is that we are actively involved with unseen thoughts and feelings that compromise us. Without the self-knowledge we need to nullify this conflicted condition in our psych...

When we're in pain most of us will do whatever seems necessary to bring relief. Almost any behavior can be justified when pain pushes us far enough, but we need not, and must not, handle it as we've always been directed to in the past. What we do need is to grow in our understanding of it. There are many things that have happened and that are happening in this world that are, at best, diffic...

The only thing that we suffer from at any moment is what we have yet to understand about ourselves. We suffer the way we presently do because we live in a small world, and our actions and decisions are based solely on the context of the information available in that world. We think we are always right because we act according to the limited thoughts and feelings that are given to us in this sm...

There is one essential reason why there is so much constant heartache and war on this earth, and why conflict has continued as it has down through the ages. The answer may surprise you. We do not understand our own pain -- our suffering. Six-and-a-half billion human beings live in ignorance of their pain. But this is not to say that we live pain-free. In fact, without exception, human beings...

When someone acts thoughtlessly towards us, and we react negatively towards him or her, it is a similar thoughtlessness in us that responds. In other words, our own hostile reactions take no thought for anything outside of what they call into account for their suddenly heated existence -- so that the only awareness we possess in these times is that low level of cognizance that possesses us, ma...