Work on Oneself

Two men stroll down a leaf-covered wood-lot path on a clear, brisk Autumn morning. Jeff and Mark have been friends for years. They enjoy their Saturday morning walks and talks together. Yet, something's different about Mark today. Jeff senses there's a problem. But he says nothing. Two minutes later Mark stops walking, and turns to Jeff. His eyes are searching for a place to begin. Then, foll...

What we become in this life is very much determined by the kind of "interior" company we keep. Even if this idea of "inner" company is new to you, its reality becomes common sense once we learn to look in the right place. Within ourselves we live in perpetual relationship with our own thoughts and feelings. If it helps you to visualize this insight, think of these psychological forms and force...

To enter the true Now, where a timeless intelligence awaits, awake within itself, requires first that we align ourselves with the eternal principles that are its secret foundation. Let's look into one of the most fundamental of these empowering principles taught by every great teacher: We reap what we sow. In these so-called progressive times, this all but forgotten principle is as simple a...

No one succeeds in life who lives in fear. Fearlessness is first the will to proceed in spite of conditions, and then it becomes a consciousness fixed in us that is beyond conditions. Real success is a fearless state of being in a conscious relationship with an Intelligence that always achieves its ends in spite of changing conditions. The success that our present nature looks for is to try...

Has there ever been a time in your life -- a period of real self-enriching growth -- that wasn't connected to a risk you either willingly undertook or -- to a time of inner trial where there was no other choice for you but to take a risk? Of course, there's only one answer to this question, and it's one recognized as being true wherever you may ask it in the world: The prize of greater wisdom...

If we wish to realize the Real Life that only a life of Truth can provide, we must each agree not only to put Truth first in our lives, but to will this highest of intentions every day with all we can gather within ourselves to do so. There are no shortcuts to reaching this higher ground in us. However, we may be rightly encouraged to know that there is no substitute for the naturally prevaili...

Have you ever limited yourself with what you thought was a power at the time you started it? Sometimes you can do something that takes you twenty years before you begin to suspect that it's a limitation and not a power. You think to yourself, "I'm really going to empower myself by getting an education, because when I have that new education, I'll have the approval I want, I'll feel accepted, a...

We are not created to resist anything... we are created to grow through everything. Resistance to life kills the process of spiritual development. When we resist what life would show us about ourselves, we effectively close the door on the Light that wants to help transform us by showing us the things we don't know we harbor in our soul.

This interior life that we are supposed to have access to and live within is ostensibly kept from us because of this nature that we live from that wants to know what it is, what it's to do, how it's to do it – at all costs, all the time – and so we miss the truth that what we are from moment to moment is what determines our experience of the moment we are in...

One reason why negative states sneak in so easily to steal our peace is that we have been conditioned to believe in their right to punish us. Here is proof of this dark conspiracy: We can be seated at a nice quiet table in a restaurant, have enough money to buy a fine meal for ourselves, have on nice clean clothes, be by ourselves or with friends, and for all of our good fortune, we will get...

How many times have you found yourself thinking you'd like to develop a new skill or sharpen an old one? Maybe you've wanted to learn another language or play a musical instrument; further your education; or get up out of your easy chair and do some catch-up on that correspondence you've been putting off for weeks! But in each, or at least most, of these instances, before you can even get sta...

We human beings are born with an indefinable longing to grow beyond ourselves, to penetrate and illuminate the mysterious depths of our own heart. The ideal and pursuit of perfection is literally seeded into our soul; it pervades our very being. Our longing to walk among the stars does not seem out of reach; the wish to be eternal goes with us everywhere. In more down-to-earth terms, if we wis...