The reason why discouraging states hold us captive as they do is that they convince us that the limited darkness of their reality is all there is for us to live within! But such small states only have this last word about the world we live in as long as we agree with what they tell us is true about our possibilities. We can do better than consent to live like this, and here are the steps that...

What drives us mad isn't the opposing action of life, or the erratic behavior of someone close to us. What literally makes us crazy, schizophrenic, is that our mind is divided; it is a house set against itself in the truest sense of the words. Honest self-observation provides us with overwhelming evidence: Our certainty over some carefully selected action is as fleeting as the moment somethi...

How can I tell which thoughts and feelings are the right ones to leave where I find them, and which ones to pick up? What if I make a mistake? I can sometimes go for two or three weeks without suffering from overt negativity. Then, out of the blue, I'll have a day where bad thoughts and feelings crawl all over me in a persistent attack. What's going on? I am so sick of my mind. Every thought I...

Letting go and spiritual growth are as rain is to a field of wildflowers: we blossom as beings only as we release ourselves from what is self-limiting. But why do this kind of work within ourselves? Even though it's obvious, it needs to be stated: we struggle with whatever we do -- with whatever personally compromises us or our contentment in life -- so that we might realize a greater...

Until the peace and pleasure found within yourself is equal to or greater than any consolation found outside of yourself, then your power to be patient, loving, and profitable in every moment is, at best, conditional.

On one hand, each of us professes to be concerned with growing and self-developing while, on the other hand, none of us ever wants to be wrong, which is a paralyzing contradiction.

We go through our lives in a continual dance of being filled with something that needs an answer, and then going out and finding that answer... only to find out that our answer wasn't quite the answer. Then, as we bring to ourselves whatever we thought we needed, it changes. Or, as we actually see that it doesn't fulfill us, then the thing inside of us that wants this answer changes. Slowly b...

To see what is true is not the same as being true to what you see, let alone working to embody it. Not yet. It's the beginning of it, because it's the invitation from truth. It touches you. It says, "Will you see this?" And then you either agree to see what the truth has requested you to see or you turn your eyes from it. And may God have mercy on the souls of the individuals who turn their eyes from what truth wants to show them...

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...

The will to be free belongs to that special part of us able to remember that we are here on earth to grow beyond the limiting influences of our own unawakened nature; it knows we are not created to participate with anything that causes us to suffer unconsciously. Our task is to awaken ourselves to this Higher Will within us that won't be compromised. How is this done? We must remember -- now a...

I have decided to finally cut off an ex-boyfriend and his friends because they were pursuing a lifestyle I felt was unhealthy and wrong. I tried to use your way of viewing things around my ex, in an attempt to be his friend and perhaps help him, but he took offense to it, not wanting to deal with my view at all. I am heartbroken at so many people exiting my life at once. Was I too pushy with m...

Our experience of life is intimately connected to the way in which we view it, and this view changes from moment to moment depending upon what we are relating to within ourselves in each moment. When we see only our own ideas about why we're feeling stressed, and they're telling us how we're entitled to be miserable, misery makes up the circle of our lives. But when we actually see, within o...