Living within us dwells an order of being that knows, without thinking about it, what is authentically good for us. The problem isn't that this higher level of being--with its natural, calm command--is actually missing just when we need it most. The real problem is that we forget it!
Just as our bodies grow healthy or not, according to what we take into our mouths, so too do we grow into wisdom, strength, or grace according to what we attend to with our mind. Our thoughts, like all energetic life forms, attract to themselves natures like themselves. The thoughts of a fellow not only flock together, but seek and are sought out by similar invisible creatures...
Outgrowing the problems created in the way we think begins with realizing the need to not only understand the nature of these invisible building blocks known as our thoughts, but to be able to peer into the structure of the invisible world these same thoughts create.
You don't have to believe that there's a fearless world above your present mind. You can live within its perfect order any time you choose. Make this choice for your own freedom starting right now.
Bound up as we are within the closed world of our own thoughts, we see virtually nothing other than what the false self of the moment wants us to see. By contrast, in real life, everything is new.
Negative states are not mandatory; believe it or not, they are voluntary! Proving this to ourselves is the first step in walking out of the psychological prison created by our current misperception of reality. Imagine for a moment you're driving home from work, and you've just come from having a pretty rough day at the office. As you drive along, your eyes see the road before you, but your...
The only way it's possible to truly deliver ourselves from the punishment of our own self-wrecking thoughts is to begin awakening to their hidden cause within us.
No anxious state exists apart from the illusion that the security, happiness, and wholeness you long for exists somewhere outside of you -- "in a time to come." Then why do we go on embracing anxious thoughts and feelings that do nothing but steal from us our love of life? The surprising answer to this question is the same as opening the door to a life free of anxious thoughts and feelings. W...
Much of our time is spent identifying the so-called cause of our discontented states, and the rest of our time is taken up trying to change our unwanted situations into what we imagine will better suit our pleasure. Of course this description puts a kind of positive spin on what amounts to one's never-ending whirl of wishes, but the facts are that these dreams of a better time to come do not o...
Real power isn't the ability to imagine and implement an endless series of new solutions to old problems, but to awaken the higher understanding that allows us to transcend the need we have to live with any painful problems at all. Which would you rather have: a big fire hose with a hydrant and a fire to put out every day, or a life without fires in them? But what we have to examine here is...
Nothing is more discontented than our lower nature, the false self. It is always unhappy with one thing or another. If there is one weed in a field of roses, you can bet that is what it will see. Since it has no real life of its own, it must endlessly create stimulating thoughts and feelings of one kind or another in order to give it the sensations of being alive. Like Sisyphus, the king of an...
When faced with any pain or grief -- past, present, or promised -- the first thing our lower nature, the "me mind," usually asks is: "What's to be done? Who can I speak to about it? What's the best way for me to handle it? Is there any way out?" And at the heart of these complaints, whether detected or not, is the me mind's favorite question: "Why does everything happen...?"