We each have ideas about who we are, how the events in our lives should go, and how other people should treat us. We believe that if everything goes according to our plan, we will be safe. By the same token, anything that threatens the fulfillment of the plan is seen as an enemy. What might some of these enemies be? Other people who don't give us the respect we deserve.

Who you really are lives above the world of thoughts and feelings. But living from the mental how, we seek answers for painful questions. Living in the spiritual Now, we understand that there is no intelligence in torment, so we simply drop those questions. The everyday mental life, which naturally includes asking how, has its practical place in the world of auto mechanics...

We are deceived anytime we find ourselves busily considering all the possibilities in a fearful moment. The only possibility those busy thoughts hold as we anxiously consider fearful options is which one of them is going to make us its prisoner. And it doesn't matter which fearful thought you choose... You plant a fear seed; you will grow a fearful tree...

Everything we need to know about "what to do" is always right here with us. But the mind that is always trying to escape the moment that is being revealed believes that it must think of something to do in order to get through the moment. There is no problem in the present moment. There is only a mind that creates a problem because it doesn't understand the moment...

We talk to ourselves about making a fresh start and even plan the path we will take when things get right... but that's it. We think, but rarely act. We dream, but won't awaken to the one fact we must face if we want a new life: There is only one place where we can hope to make a fresh start in life, and this has to be in that place where life itself is new all the time...

Topics covered: The problem is not the conditions in the world outside of us. The problem is the consciousness that looks out at the world; The world is in the mess that it is in because everyone in the world is trying to fix the mess; The antidote is in the venom. The real release from fear doesn't exist outside of the understanding that we are already free, but deceived.

Topics covered:We get into trouble because we keep putting ourselves in the hands of an unconscious part of us that says, "Now I know what I have been doing wrong"; The first step of going beyond what is false is to recognize it as being false; What makes us so sure that we are right? What we KNOW. Our certainty. This is what sets us against other people and against life itself.

Topics covered: It is the things that we are identified with -- that we don't know we are identified with -- that are the basis of old fears; It should be obvious that the purpose of our life cannot have anything to do with what the mind thinks the purpose of life is about; It is what you discover about this life -- not what we take from it -- that is meaningful and everlasting...

Topics covered: To understand something completely means to realize it with your mind, heart and body; Every true teaching points to the following fact in one way or another: Unless a person gives up his life, he will not find what his heart really wants; "The first shall be last, and the last shall be first." The personality that is formed by the world and that forms the world it sees is currently the first...

Topics Covered: False certainty, uncertainty, and real certainty are the inevitable stages that an aspirant must go through on the spiritual path; False certainty leads to misguided actions; We want certainty because our consciousness is uncomfortable with anything that is unfamiliar that does not confirm its perceived status quo; False security can be taken from you at any time...