Our inner work to be present -- including the attention needed to do so -- is to make possible this revelation: the negative experience of any unwanted moment is inseparable from the nature of the seer...

If we can't give the whole of our attention to someone -- or, for that matter, to any moment -- then we can't listen. If we can’t listen, we can't possibly hear the whole story...

Topics Covered: You can't separate an imagined fear from the self that believes what it has imagined; "I was born when all I once feared, I loved"; Attention establishes relationship through becoming conscious of an existing link; Resistance is the first form of all complaint; There's no such thing as a time to come when everything comes up roses; The "no frame" moment; All I see is what I don...

We frequently feel ourselves to be under the power of things. We feel we are the victims of an unfair social system, economic upheavals, painful relationships -- even a lawn chair that won't unfold right. We fight these conditions, feeling ourselves to be under their "dark" influence. The fact is, however, these events do not exist as negative events except for our perception of them. The only...

The door to the limitless life opens for us only as wide as we are willing to love being made aware of our present limitations.

Contemplation is sustained attention on a question the heart holds in its keeping, knowing, full well, that the mind -- of itself -- cannot answer. This form of sustained conscious inquiry is the ground of true meditation: it is creation aware of itself.

A rose doesn't "try" to be beautiful; it never struggles to win one's attention, or to prove its value. Any part of you -- pressing within, or upon you to make a favorable impression -- of any kind, for any reason -- is unnatural to your True Self.

The false self can't afford to stop its talking about your troubles (or potential triumphs!) otherwise, your unencumbered attention would naturally see that the only trouble you really have is that you're forever being filled with nothing and thus tricked into believing that you are something.

Part I: This Moment is my garden, my awareness is its boundaries. My responsibility is to care for it with the tools of loving attention, and the fruits from this, my garden, are my reward. Part II: From those of whom much is asked, more is required.

The effort to remain inwardly awake, the work to be grounded in the present moment, is not to put away some pain that may be troubling you. The act of being "in Presence" - the attention required to do so -- is to make possible the following revelation, including its self-liberating realization: the negative experience of any given moment is, in fact, *inseparable from the nature of the seer...

There is a very strange feature as concerns most human beings: we would rather feel anxious thinking about unwanted moments over which we have no power, than to practice placing our attention in the fact of that moment...

Setting a true spiritual intention is the first step in developing the power of attention, the instrument of Will at all levels of creation. Seeing that you can't keep an interior intention is the only way to dispel the illusion that, as you are, you possess a will of your own. Realizing the truth of your actual situation stirs and strengthens the wish to develop a will of your own. Slowly you...