Dear Guy: I play jazz guitar and sing professionally. After reading "The Secret of Letting Go," I'm beginning to see the light (name of an old Nat Cole song). Performing used to feel a lot more subjective than it did after reading your book. How can Letting Go help one to perform in public with less stress and anxiety? Thanks! (Student correspondence, 12/5/07)...

ey Lesson: Those who turn and run away, who quit when life asks of them more than they seem to have in that hour, prove real only their fears -- and this is their sorrow. But let us press on past our doubts to make this glad discovery: the reason we mustn't give in is because persistence alone proves that Life never gives up on us; what we hope for is nothing compared to the hope that Real Life

The more we practice quietly stepping outside that rushing stream of thoughts about ourselves, the more we realize our True Self as being something altogether unthinkable; for the undreamed power of a silent mind is this: Since it never sinks itself into useless considerations of the painful kind, it has no need to be rescued from its own troubled creations!...

Whenever unhappiness lingers on -- so much so that we start believing darkness has won the day -- we may find new strength to start life over in this bright truth: the only cause for our continuing sense of feeling so bound and restricted is that we have agreed -- without knowing it -- to live in a world smaller than is our potential to let go of whatever may be limiting us.

Experience proves that whatever we seek to end usually lingers all the longer, which is why we must learn the Way to grant negative states their safe passage through us -- in spite of the temporary pain that always attends their appearance.

Classroom Talk: 8/11/2002 - As long as we are at war within ourselves with all of the stress and sorrow such conflict breeds, everyone around us is a potential casualty of our pain.

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...

Nothing is more discontented than our lower nature, the false self. It is always unhappy with one thing or another. If there is one weed in a field of roses, you can bet that is what it will see. Since it has no real life of its own, it must endlessly create stimulating thoughts and feelings of one kind or another in order to give it the sensations of being alive. Like Sisyphus, the king of an...

Topics covered: How do I deal with severe physical tension; Knowledge by itself kills inquiry; What's behind the question "how long do I have to go through this?"; We live from an autonomic level of consciousness; You can't separate what you experience from the consciousness that produces it; What it means to die to yourself; Negative states are ugly but they...

The reason perfect love casts out fear is because any unwanted condition willingly embraced loses its power over us. No one is a captive of what is agreed to, nor does he wish for a time to come when he will be free. Only when we are no longer driven to imagine a freedom apart from what the moment holds for us, will we find that we are free now.

If anxious thoughts and feelings had any power to help us reach some place in life where, finally, we'd be released from the pain of always feeling rushed... don't you think we'd have reached there by now!...

When some anxiety comes along and takes over your life, are you an awake, inwardly centered person or are you an unconscious, outwardly driven man or woman? Which are you? That you're outwardly directed is pretty obvious. Why? Because that anxious state could not exist without your false belief that who you are -- your well-being -- is connected to something happening exterior to yourself. And...