Because what is dark, spiritually speaking, can never behold itself...it can only imagine itself. This is its torment; it is, also, strangely enough, the fuel that drives this lower nature through one or the other of its twin, but futile tasks: trying to hide from itself -- by running after some imagined pleasure -- or -- by running away from the pain that appears each time real life challenge...

Part 1 The more perfect the reflection, the less difference there is between the perceived and the perceiver. It is the absence of this distinction that the divided mind, the false self, fears above all else... for its very sense of existence depends upon feeling apart from all that it sees. Part 2 The love that you uncover in your heart for God is as un-measurable as God's love its...

It was we, who in ignorance of reality, carelessly attribute weight to events that are without substance.

The birth of true will begins with your discovery that -- at your present level of spiritual development -- you have none; that what you have always called "doing" is no different than a puppet dreaming it pulls its own strings... in spite of the fact that, more often than not, the puppet is moved to act against itself and others. Only through the love of something unknowable within yourself,...

Until we can see our life... as a whole, we see all of its events only through a single, but constantly shifting "I" within us; these fragments of self take each experience as being the whole of our existence because each imagines -- for the duration of its temporary little life -- that it is the whole. Here, in this virtually unceasing state of unconscious identification, lies our sorrow, fr...

There are those who avoid -- at all costs -- being tested by life. There are those who wait, in fear, for life to test them. Then there are the rare few who choose to use life to test them in every moment they can remember to do so. Of these three types, which do you think grows in courage and faith, in strength and compassion? To answer correctly, and then to act on this wisdom, is the sp...

You must work -- in solitude -- and with others to polish the mirror of yourself, and then take it out into the world to test your skill. When it reflects everything just as it is, the mirror is complete. But should you step before it, only to hear it call out some ugliness in yourself, or in another, the mirror is not yet finished; for even though a mirror may reflect an ugliness that appear...

There are still religious wars being raged in this day and age if you have the eyes to see that the reigning religion of our time, its god, is "big business"...its priests being lawyers, generals, immoral CEOs; where corrupt politicians serve as acolytes to parasitical international corporations. This "religion" professes the eventual "good of all," but serves only the interests of the few w...

What good is the love of Truth without standing up for the freedom it promises to those whom love it? This means that we must act from this passion -- embrace what is light, right, and true -- even in the midst of all that seems wrong within and around us. We must dare to bring its flame into the midst of our storms, into that darkness that comes with all times of trial. For only then and ther...

A student recently asked about "how to process the death of a client." It is the mind that wants to "process" whatever it does in order to restore its sense of equilibrium: a false system of checks and balances produced by images, beliefs, and their attending fears that shake with every shock. If there's grief, let there be grief; if there's regret or some kind of doubt, let that be as it is...

Any I that wants to know that it knows... is outside real I. In time, and with vigilant interior work, one sees (as best it can be said) that real I is both seer (and the seen), a unified awareness that is effortlessly aware of any sense of I that appears within it, wanting to be it. This I -- and all others like it -- are pretenders to the throne. Watching without wanting is the only pure for...