We have in us -- built over time as part of the construct of our personality - a literal host of demands. Things that over time have been thought over and over and over again until the construction of those thoughts becomes an unconscious attitude. For instance, if you think enough times, "Why are they doing this? I shouldn't be treated like this!" Gradually, you walk around with a chip on your shoulder, but you don't know it's a chip on your shoulder...
Real life is revelation. There is no moment in which something isn't stirring us in a constant kind of disturbance for the purpose of revealing both what we are and what we can be. But, in moments we are brought alive by the sudden awareness of who and what we have been, our unconscious reaction is to either resist or try to control the revelation. There is however...
What do we typically give our attention to in any given moment? Whether we are busy working on a practical task or waiting expectantly for something to happen, our attention is usually lost in a stream of thoughts about the past or about what may take place in the future. For those of us who are tired of finding ourselves the servant of any errant thought, we must learn what it means to wait i...
The reason that we do not give ourselves completely to whatever we are doing is because there is something in us that is afraid to do that. Like a governor on an engine that prohibits a vehicle from going past a certain speed, we have an internal governor that tells us that something terrible will happen to us if we dare to exceed the boundaries of what seems safe. The truth is that something...
To see that “taking thought” leads to naught... is the beginning of the end of all useless solutions.
Topics Covered: Anything you imagine can't be new because it comes from thought, and all thought comes from the content of the past; There can be no new experience of the moment without being in a new relationship to that moment. Experience is relationship; You can't change your relationship with the moment until you see the nature that is producing the experience of the moment.
Topics Covered: Thought cannot touch what is spiritual. We are meant to be connected to a much broader and more profound world. All true teachings exist for the purpose of awakening and developing the part of us that can participate in this broader world; Without knowing it we look for our possibilities in the past. What the personality wants and pursues does not serve the soul...
Whatever it is that we wish to let go of must be something from which we wish to be free. This may be unpleasant or troubling relationships, a problem-filled past or fearful future, any form of addiction, recent painful events -- or any of those disturbing thoughts and feelings about these same troubling things that we no longer want in our lives. The truth is that troubles like these come wi...
So many times I want to just give up on my inner work because I see the possibility of being a new man evaporate before my eyes in the fire of some confusion or negative state. I start thinking about your teachings, or those of past masters, and feel such despair because I can see I'm not getting anywhere... even though I know (in my heart, anyway) there's no place to get to! What now? (Studen...
Too frequently we feel as though our lives are under the power of things outside of us and beyond our ability to deal with: prisoners in one way or another of an unfair social system, impossible work conditions, an unforgiving past, or a failed relationship. Even trying to assemble a build-it-yourself bookshelf that doesn't know it "goes together with ease" can lock us away in the "house of pain."
Real Life is change itself, a ceaseless flow of creative forces expressed in ever-new forms. So, our inability to make a fresh start isn't because Life refuses us what we need to succeed. The problem is this: before we can hope to make a real new beginning in life, we must deliberately...