Consciousness of any unwanted condition in us must precede its correction, just as the rising sun dismisses any of our fears imagined hidden in the darkness of night.
It is impossible to change the relationship we have with the world around us without changing the relationship we have in ourselves, with ourselves.
The only way we can be released from any painful sense of false responsibility is to see that it is based in a false belief.
As life pours itself out in the stream of passing time, and we run into challenges seemingly greater than our ability to answer -- each of these encounters "asks" this question of us: "Are you willing to change (who you have been) in order to realize a higher possibility of yourself?" And though moments like these trouble us because of their uncertainty, here's why we should be very grateful...
The hardest part of the journey along the upward path is the gradual realization that one's work to awaken is, at best, imperfect. Along the ascending path each footfall serves to echo an unwanted reminder of one's imperfect actions, imperfect thoughts, imperfect emotions, imperfect devotion, imperfect attention, so forth on and so on. However, seeing the truth of oneself in this light is but...
Consciousness of any unwanted condition in us must precede its correction, just as the rising sun dismisses the fear hiding in the darkness of night.
If we want new answers to old self-defeating questions such as "Why me?" -- we're going to have to use our mind in a new way. If we want new answers, real answers, we need new questions. First, we must realize that our stressful experiences are not caused by people or events. They are caused by our reactions to them. I know this is different than most of us feel, and yet, we can see that we have changed the people and even the events in our...
There is a way to understand and use our inevitable frustration in life so that we don't continue to make the habitual angry response with all its harmful results. Instead of runaway forces taking charge of us, we would be in control...
One of the gifts of being human is that our individual potential far exceeds the boundaries of our (animal) body, which, like all natural creations, must serve the general laws it's been created to obey. We have the possibility of consciously knowing the existence of another order of body that is in, but not of our physical form. For example, consider the oak tree; it is in the acorn, yet its body is timeless relative to the seed from which it emerges.
Have you ever heard within you, not necessarily in words, something to the effect of "Oh no, not this again!"? Perhaps we're looking at the latest flame of our heart and we see a fire in his or her eyes, but it's not because they are looking at us. In that moment we no longer see the moment unfold as it is, but rather we stand there transfixed -- experiencing the moment as we are; and we are not really present!
There is a nature inside of us -- a product of this world physically and psychologically -- that does not want to change. In fact, it is hell-bent on having everything remain the same so that it can complain about the same things again and again. This unconscious nature is a product of our world physically and psychologically. It's almost like a wrapping -- much like a seed is encased...
We are deceived anytime we find ourselves busily considering all the possibilities in a fearful moment. The only possibility those busy thoughts hold as we anxiously consider fearful options is which one of them is going to make us its prisoner. And it doesn't matter which fearful thought you choose... You plant a fear seed; you will grow a fearful tree...