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.

Seldom do we know a greater need for making a fresh start than in those mind-numbing moments when we find ourselves feeling thrown for a loss. These feelings of loss often leave an unconscious, invisible residue of fear which tends to taint every area of our lives with distasteful timidity, born of the neurotic suspicion that in some way, life is conspiring to take something away from us. Bu...

Moving away from the mental how into the spiritual Now places you under the guiding influences of an intelligence that never fears the unknown, because higher understanding is its very nature.

More often than most of us care to tell, we run into unwanted moments that seem to challenge the very fabric of our being. Almost anything can be the proverbial straw that breaks us: a friend's betrayal, loss of health or a loved one, unexpected financial strain. Even a shattered dream can throw us into a dark nightmare. Certainly, no one gets out of his or her bed in the morning thinking, "To...

The real adversary in our lives, that proverbial thorn in our side that leaves us aching and angry, and then sends us looking for someone to blame, is not what we have always believed. It is not something "out there." It's something "in here": an intimate enemy.

We cannot change, control, or be stronger than anything our mind says is outside of us. But we can be inwardly awake, conscious of the fact that we don't need to be stronger than what we see because we aren't really separate from what we see.