In days now thought distant to us but perhaps not as far as one would imagine, the queen of a great country said to her daughter, "Constance, come here and sit down next to me. Even though you are still but a child, you are now old enough to receive the gift I have been holding for you since the day you were born." Constance met her glance with a big open grin that fairly shouted, "Tell me mo...
When you begin to doubt everything you believe about your suffering, you will see that you never had to remain in the path of those destructive storms at all.
As a race of beings, we have become completely complicit in the pain that visits us. A thought from the past pops up and punishes us. Someone says something we don't like, and we try to punish them and feel the pain of the blame that we place on them. There is an endless series of relationships with a part of our own nature that has convinced us that the pain is produced by a condition outside of us...
Doesn't it feel at times as though we are all shipwrecked on an island of confusion and stormy emotions? And that over time we've all but forgotten it's possible to live any other way? Where our days are spent either hiding from the storms, or building inadequate shelters to protect ourselves while doing nothing real to get rescued? Yet, something in us knows that there will never be an end to...
Every time we accept a negative state we compromise ourselves and increase the level of conflict for ourselves and everyone we meet.
Tonight, millions of men and women will climb into bed struggling with broken hearts, knotted stomachs, and frightened nerves. For some it's the bleakness of a shattered relationship... or the gnawing suspicion that they can no longer trust their partner. For others it's the dread over the presentation they've been asked to give, or the project they've put off to the last minute. And st...
One way or another, we all suffer over things that we can't stop doing to ourselves or to others. Adding to the conflict inherent in self-compromising behaviors is the fact that it's frustrating beyond belief since most of us (in some way) have built a business, worked, and succeeded in some place - won accolades, impressed our friends - and we've weathered storms.
Real spiritual strength is realized, slowly, by daring to detect and drop the blind negative states that we've been allowing to define us.
We can never hope to be free as long as any part of us struggles with, or suffers over what others are doing, have done, or won't do with their lives. Besides, if we could remain aware of the often-compromised state of our own character, that is, how we still do those things to others that we don't want to do, this awakened conscience would stir in us a new need. Rather than worrying about whether so-and-so gets his comeuppance for being the...
Learn to see the deception in any assumption that wants you to believe that there is no higher alternative to your suffering than to either run from it or simply endure it.
GF: Welcome everyone. Before we begin tonight let me present a few thoughts about what is required of us to walk away from useless suffering. No one can hope to know such freedom without first understanding certain truths as to what keeps us captives of unconscious negative forces. We will discuss some of these insights now, and more at chat's close. Nothing is harder for us to accept about o...
Meekly submitting to any negative emotion in the hopes it will run its course and leave us alone just invites it to subjugate us again.