Almost every day I receive a letter, an e-mail, or phone call from an aspirant who wants to know, essentially, the following: "What must I do to succeed spiritually?" Or, in a slight variation on that theme: "What's the right way to do what I must in order to awaken?"

Part of our essential need to be at peace is to know that we are in the right place at the right time, doing the right thing, and to know it in such a fashion that nothing can come along and convince us that we are not. Have you ever thought to yourself "I'm doing the right thing at the right time," and someone said, "No, you're not," and then everything fell apart?...

Awakening to Real Life occurs in direct proportion to waking up from our own sleeping nature -- a fact which brings us face to face with some of life's oldest and greatest spiritual mysteries. The myth of the phoenix, the riddle of the sphinx, even the story of Christ's birth in a dimly lit stable of barnyard animals... all point to the existence of one nature dwelling in the midst of another...