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?...

"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.

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...

We work very hard to correct conditions that are really no more than secondary outcomes, and not the real problem at all. We fight a daily war to protect ourselves against enemies that, in fact, never are responsible for the pain we feel. The unhappiness we feel is the bitter fruit of a lack of self-understanding. In our confusion we do many things that are self-harming. We do not deliberatel...

Each time we feel an emotional pain, we should use that as a signal that we've made a mistake, that we've crashed and now need to find and try another new way. The problem for most of us is that we rarely allow ourselves to learn in this way. We have hundreds of experiences each day in which our expectations crash into reality. Whenever this happens, we have a close encounter of the truthful...

The spiritually awakened life is not something that one achieves -- the true higher life comes to us naturally and reveals and expresses itself in anyone who realizes that this living light within us is always present.

Rather than defend our mistakes by finding excuses for them, we can understand that our refusal to learn the lesson at hand ensures we will meet that lesson again, along with its misery.

There is a way past this part of yourself that would rather hold on than get out. However, to really let go of these fears, we must first go through them. *** The only thing you lose when you let go of something you are afraid to live without is the fear itself. *** Real freedom is the absence of the self that feels trapped, not the trappings that self acquires to make it feel free. ***...

Self-discovery -- and the new self-knowledge it generates -- has no limitations, no moment where there isn't the possibility for something higher to pierce the soul and so reveal that everything that once was is no more because something greater now stands there. This means that there is no end to what is higher, to what is ever-above you; and that the ground of this immeasurable state of sel...