Of what use is our endless struggle to adapt and even achieve some of the more common culturally-valued prizes, knowing (as all of us do) that nothing we can ever possess has the power to stave off our own inevitable passing? The following quotation that I just love is from Vernon Howard, a great twentieth century mystic, that really not only helps to put this idea that we're...
Every truth ever discovered -- each new light that will ever burn bright -- already exists in our consciousness. All we will ever know and share about love, humility, compassion, and sacrifice -- the secrets that will reveal and then resolve old sorrows -- awaits us within ourselves. Hidden in this truth is our great promise, both as individuals and as a race of beings...
Eventually we reach the point where we start to realize that we are not going to find peace, contentment, happiness, strength, fearlessness -- all of the things that in our heart of hearts we wish we had -- outside of us.
There is a very old idea that, as best can be determined, comes to us from the days of the early Christian Desert Fathers. In six concise words it touches upon a certain fact of human nature that even volumes of books would prove unable to express any better: "Fish swim, birds fly... man prays." In other words, it's the nature of fish to glide through water, for birds to soar through open ski...
There will be many, many times in our journey beyond ourselves where to put the truth first means we must see and admit where we haven't been truthful with ourselves.
When the soul cries out to spirit to carry her to a new world beyond the boundaries of this earthly domain, she is calling for the winds of faith to sweep down, fill her tattered and empty sails, and take her safely away. The wait for these winds is never too long for any soul who is both patient and persistent in purpose. And when -- as it must come to pass upon any such journey home -- dark...
Occasionally, for all of us, we accidentally enter into the Now. We could be skiing, skating, doing yoga, playing golf, and suddenly our activity aligns us with the flow of that moment. We can even be in the flow of a conversation, and in that moment we are aware of something sustaining us. Physically we enter into the Now because that flow is part of the Now. Emotionally we can enter accident...
Could the light of timeless truths, spoken by masters over thousands of years -- the hope and promise they hold about our own latent higher possibilities -- help liberate us from the host of fears that hold our consciousness hostage? Imagine the end of all forms of fanaticism born of imagined differences, the beginning of a new order of peace created from the collective understanding that *al...
Every truth ever discovered -- each new light that will ever burn bright -- already exists in our consciousness.
When you know in your heart that you must keep going but your feet just aren't getting the message, self-understanding can open and carry you through doors that self-insistence cannot.
Self-discovery -- and the new self-knowledge it generates -- has no limitations, no moment where there isn't the possibility for something higher to pierce the soul and so reveal that everything that once was is no more because something greater now stands there. This means that there is no end to what is higher, to what is ever-above you; and that the ground of this immeasurable state of sel...
Although self-study may include reading certain inner life books or listening to lectures on self-transformation, these materials, as encouraging and informative as they may be, are really only preparational tools; they have their place. After all, if you were going to climb a mountain, you would want expert advice on the proper equipment to use, and you would want instruction from others who...