Who is the most unwelcome guest that appears at your door? (And it is not your son-in-law!) Again... Who is the most unwelcome guest that ever came 'knock-knock-knocking' at your door? How many of you had some dark thought or feeling knock at your door and wake you up this very morning... unwanted guests such as depression, anxiety... "Hello, anybody home?" How about worry...

In one respect, everything about one's spiritual life is so terribly simple. There is only one time and one way in which to be still, and that is to be still. So the first thing is to understand that we don't need to stop the world. What we need to do is understand that the world whirling around us is the world of our own reactions. It isn't until we can start to see some of this that it be...

Have you ever noticed that when you're under the cloud of some negative state, what you do to try to "make things better" actually makes the situation worse? Struggling to free yourself from your own negative reactions is a bit like throwing gasoline onto a fire, isn't it? Recognizing that you get trapped in this pattern of taking action that neither relieves nor rescues you from...

In days long past, seekers of Truth spoke of a mysterious "lost chord." Perhaps you are familiar with this timeless spiritual idea? Roughly speaking, the search for this lost chord centered on an idea not too dissimilar from the one that drove seekers to try to find the legendary philosopher's stone. If someone could discover, group, and then intone certain musical notes together -- at the rig...

Part 1: Hidden within the opposing forces is a Light that, once realized, releases one from the bondage born of struggling with only one side or the other. Understood properly, all opposing forces contain and create their own gateway, but only when one stands before -- and within them -- long enough, consciously enough, to see it open. Part 2: We live within a lower level of consciousness...

Classroom Talk: 12/9/2018 - Featured Study Group Topic for the Week of December 17, 2018. We can spend our lives anxious and fearful over each arrival of some unwanted moment -- trying, in vain, to protect ourselves from it -- or, we can use each similar situation to see the following: resisting any negative reaction is the same as turning a blind eye to the lower level of self responsible for it...

Where is the border between conscience and unconsciousness? The reason the world is beyond repair is because it is populated by a race of beings that now believe that they are conscious. They are not conscious; you are not conscious. The proof that you are not conscious is that you hurt one another, that's the proof of it. And that you hurt yourself, that's the proof of it. Every time you talk to yourself, every time you punish yourself...

The more we imagine a fearless life created by conditions outside of us, the more compelled we feel to try and control those same conditions.

We have the capacity to stop making ourselves powerless by waking up to having put ourselves where our powers are stolen from us.

The only thing that holds us down is what we don't yet know about ourselves. This insight explains why our ability to learn the truth about ourselves, to increase our level of self understanding, is the same as being empowered to raise our own life level. If we want to grow inwardly, free ourselves from the ties that bind, we must find new ways to learn the truth about ourselves. These higher...

One of the most slippery parts of the upper path is the temptation to judge ourselves -- to loath ourselves for whatever "weakness" is exposed to us in the moment. The act of judging ourselves in times like these seems natural and even necessary if we hope to ever "outgrow" our own limitations as revealed. But this kind of self-laceration is a Trojan horse within whose dark recesses lies...

Each spring great forces are released to work upon and within us. During this time of the year the possibility of making a brand new beginning in life is never greater. Why is this true? Because spring also "dawns" within us, and if we will align ourselves with the power of its presence, then working for us is the unstoppable principle of rebirth itself. But, if we would receive this new life...