Barring those moments when we find ourselves in real physical danger, conditions, of themselves, have absolutely no authority over us. It's true. No event or circumstance has any power to make us feel one way or another. The only command any condition may have over us is that which we unconsciously surrender to it. And what we've given away, we can take back. Insight coupled with action is a...
Look closely for all of the inner gold locked within the wisdom of the following fact. Your extra efforts here will pay off handsomely. If you can't see some thought or feeling as it goes through you, then you don't have the choice whether to be that thought or feeling or not. So, before we can choose not to compromise ourselves, we must first become acutely aware of those thoughts of our...
We frequently feel ourselves to be under the power of things. We feel we are the victims of an unfair social system, economic upheavals, painful relationships -- even a lawn chair that won't unfold right. We fight these conditions, feeling ourselves to be under their "dark" influence. The fact is, however, these events do not exist as negative events except for our perception of them. The only...
Imagine a man lost in a series of deep and dark caverns. He anxiously shouts out "Hello!" and then strains to listen for a response. A heartbeat passes and in the distance he hears "Hello, hello." His spirits surge and off he races in the direction of the caller. He doesn't understand it is only an echo. He doesn't know he is following the sound of his own voice -- a voice that is taking him d...
Special Insight: Never mind how much there may be to do, or how hard some task appears to be. Get one thing done and then, take that step again. Consciously brush aside any other concerns. Do what's in your power. Refuse to deal with what's not. Exercise and Instruction Have you ever had this experience? You're faced with so many things that have to be done in a timely manner...
If we wish to find peace we must understand something of its life. Here are a few such facts: Peace is the natural radiation of a living Now; it is one with that Light whose life is the eternal present itself, even as the emanations of light and warmth are one with the sun from which they radiate. If our intuition can perceive that the above ideas are based in truth, then we should be naturall...
One maxim of self-development I sense is true is that the way out of any stressful situation is to "go through it." How does this approach apply to reducing stress-producing thought-attacks? Everything depends upon our ability to inwardly discriminate between thoughts and feelings that are for us as opposed to those that are against us. Whenever confronted with an onslaught of internal i...
To be a human being is to seek. There is a part in us that is incessantly seeking something. We are never not looking. When we start out in life, we have inside of us this longing, this seeking, and we look for something that will answer whatever it is that has come into us that says it needs something in order to complete itself. For example, I'm eighteen years old, and into my mind comes...
Before speaking to someone who intimidates me, I sometimes feel my throat start to close up and my voice choke up with so much tension that I find it hard to speak. I've got to get behind this fear, but I don't know how! One way in which it's possible for us to outgrow the problems that we face is to not let those problems dictate our behavior to us. In this instance...
In the competitive and complex worlds of business and science, imagination is critical to the processes of creativity. It serves a valuable and practical purpose. New developments are created by imagining better ways to improve old technologies. Important developments come in increments. Progress moves ahead one step at a time. But in our inner life, we don't want a continuation of *what has...
As paradoxical as it seems, our journey to reach the undiscovered territory within our own consciousness -- this distant High Country above and beyond thought whose Promised Land lies yet hidden within us -- begins with a strange and often shocking discovery: What needs to be escaped are the constraints of our own conditioned consciousness. In other words, the freedom we long for is from our p...
Almost every kind of unhappy feeling is the result of mistaking the partial for the whole. What this means is that when we don't see the whole picture, we are likely to act in a way that is self-defeating. One example of this would be that terrible sinking feeling that comes with learning too late, after you've become upset, that things weren't the way you were so sure they had been. That, in...