Understanding

Our lives are nothing but a series of invitations, a series of moments in which we run into what we don't know. And in this experience of our own limitations, something good and natural takes place. In its constant stirring and seeking, life feeds back to us the boundaries determined by our present understanding.

It is not in our power to change anyone else. On the other hand, our experience always brings us to this moment of truth where we have the possibility of changing what happens to us. And so it follows that the person to whom and in whom the Truth begins to become a living force, cannot have a bad day or a bad relationship.

Have you ever gone through a crisis of some kind, and after 20 or 30 years of the same lesson coming back, you realize you have been walking along the same dark road? I know that it gets tough sometimes, but those of us who have any love whatsoever for what is true, good, and Divine should be encouraged. Because you have no idea what's on our side, how much is trying to be given to us at all times.

To be able to see any life event -- good or bad -- as a vehicle to help transport us from our present level of understanding to a higher one requires that we develop a new relationship with these unwanted events in our lives. Instead of trying to protect ourselves from them, we must become willing to see what they are revealing to us about ourselves in that same moment. The difference between these two paths and their attending possibilities...

The real underlying limitation in our relationships is rooted in how we look at and think about others who are in our life. But, perhaps more accurately stated: the real problem we have with others is what we don't yet see and understand about ourselves!

You can be self-enlightened instead of self-frightened. You have a choice. This discovery that you can always choose in favor of yourself is real excitement. You do not have to accept your present life-level. Life-level is what determines whether you sail through this life or sink in it. At present, it may seem to you as if there are times when you don't have much choice in your own life. I want you to know that this is a lie...

Can you think of a way in which you regularly sabotage yourself? You sabotage yourself when "something" in you acts against yourself. Now, for most of us, we have a passing understanding of an idea like that because we recognize that we don't want to hurt ourselves. We don't want to hurt others. We don't want to be a burden to this planet. We don't want to do a lot of the things we do.

Regardless of the assertion of any fearful state that seeks to convince you otherwise (using its painful presence within you as "proof" that the prison you're locked within will stand until the end of time), apply this one great truth: That fear must break down if it doesn't succeed in breaking down your willingness to test its reality. How do you conduct such a test?...

In this life, we have one of two choices when it comes to painful events, past or present. We can either go on hating and fearing what we think life has done to us (or others), and let these negative reactions create our experience for us... or we can learn to use these same dark reactions to free ourselves from them. But just wanting to learn the truth isn't enough...

"Do you know why you want freedom? To know why you want freedom, you must know what you want freedom from. And most of us do not know that idea of 'freedom from' -- other than when we're in a bad relationship. What you want is freedom from pain. You want freedom from fear. Freedom from self-doubt. Freedom from feeling inadequate. Freedom from being alone...."

Any true self-aware state must include the presence of a humility that tempers the temptation inherent in all forms of self-evaluation; otherwise, what we might call self-awakening is really just a form of secret self-admiration.

Since what others may do to us is not in our power to change, we need only concern ourselves with what we do to ourselves, for this is in our power.