The character of greatness must be measured in two ways, else the measurement is flawed. First, and by far most popular of all, is by one's ability to succeed in times of trial where others may fail. But of no less importance, and perhaps foundational to any form of greatness, is one's willingness to start over in spite of failure, when success seems farthest away.

A great spiritual paradox: the knowledge we gain of any weakness that lives within us strengthens self-understanding. To know the truth of this is to welcome those shocks in life by whose light we become more and more wise.

In case you did not hear the news, a young man was trampled to death on "black Friday" at a Wal-Mart in New York by more than two thousand people who broke down the doors at 5:00 AM in a mad rush to secure the best holiday deals for themselves. When we hear about events like this, a person can't help but wonder, "What in the world happened?" The official excuse for what caused the mob to rush...

One sure way to guarantee that you'll continue rushing through the present moment is to cling to the false belief that you can escape unwanted thoughts and feelings by trying to run away from them.

There is an ancient idea, perhaps best expressed in the New Testament, which states that before a human being can hope to awaken, he or she must have not enemies. When you lie to someone, you have automatically made an enemy because you will always resist that person out of fear that he or she will expose your lie at any given moment. Therefore, not only have we made an enemy when we lie, we a...

Once we realize that whatever we will bring into our awareness has always been an aspect of our own consciousness, only not yet awakened to, we also understand this liberating truth: nothing exists outside of us. All destinations are already within us, including the Love we are searching for and the unconditional freedom that It alone has the power to grant.

Part 1 Rushing is the pain of trying, in vain, to avoid the awareness of what we are being given in favor of trying to get on to what it is that we want! Part 2 Only the simultaneous awareness of "Yes and No" is capable of producing the sensitive energies needed to receive impressions from the objective world, to know an Intelligence that isn't divided into parts that act against ea...

"Worry and Hurry" are evil twins who prey on unwary souls by means of their unseen partnership. As "Worry" paints a negative mental image that promises the worst to come, "Hurry" whispers of the urgency in this emergency -- the emotional effect of which is to send us rushing to repair a problem that probably doesn't even exist!

Part I: Seeing and being are inescapably intertwined because the basis of both of these characters is founded in light. Part II: The victories, the defeats - - everything passes in time only to come again and dress the moment in its approved costume. All that remains constant is the stage, in and upon which the continuing saga unfolds. Be the stage.

Real achievement -- the true measure of how far we have advanced in life -- is not determined by what we have acquired, but rather by the degree to which we have put our fears behind us.

We make first contact with the unshakable character of our True Self when we stand on the unknown ground of an unwanted moment and see there is no need to fear or to fall into despair.

There is no one problem that a person has that is not the problem of everyone. The bottom line is that the only problem we ever have is that we hurt ourselves. If we had the choice, we would all obviously say that we would like to stop hurting ourselves. But the fact is that we run into problems--run into ourselves--again and again. So what is it that is blocking our wish to stop punishing our...