Real spiritual strength is realized, slowly, by daring to drop any self-blinding negative states that we have allowed to define us.

We put tremendous amounts of energy into developing and carrying out plans for protecting ourselves psychologically from a world we perceive as a hostile place. Thus, we justify our actions to ward off the possible criticism of others. We fawn before people we see as more powerful than we are. We tell ourselves that we are superior to those we see as less powerful than ourselves. So, instead o...

Where is the border between conscience and unconsciousness? The reason the world is beyond repair is because it is populated by a race of beings that now believe that they are conscious. They are not conscious; you are not conscious. The proof that you are not conscious is that you hurt one another, that's the proof of it. And that you hurt yourself, that's the proof of it. Every time you talk to yourself, every time you punish yourself...

Featured Study Group Topic for the Week of September 12, 2016. Setting a true spiritual intention is the first step in developing the power of attention, the expression and instrument of Will at all levels of creation. Seeing that you can't keep an interior intention is the only way to dispel the illusion that, as you are, you possess a will of your own. Realizing the truth of your actual situ...

Topics covered:  We give more attention and care to the practical affairs of life than we give to our inner life. Nothing is more serious or more important than attending to your interior life; The punchline of the story about the twins who would inherit their Father's Kingdom was: "Freedom without service is an illusion. The great, sacred law is that whenever you are asked to place the needs of the kingdom above your own, you must do so regardless of the personal cost."

In this podcast, Guy Finley talks about how a still and attentive mind perfectly reflects the "presence" moment.

Featured Study Group Topic for the Week of September 3, 2018. It is a strange characteristic of most human beings that we would rather feel anxious and strained about things over which we have no power, than to do the one thing actually in our power -- for whose conscious practice we would know the very peace we claim to be seeking. And that is: to ground our attention in the fact of the momen...

When you go outside on a beautiful day, do you step into the sunlight and try to enjoy the warmth, or isn't the enjoyment inherent in the experience? Similarly, when you see a falcon fly amongst the trees, land, shake its tail, and then survey its domain... or a great buck with its massive horns, broad chest, and strong neck... do you try to feel the nobility of these creatures? Or isn't that...

Be wise; be attentive in all things for the second error follows the first.

What key lessons in particular can I apply when the job situation looks so grim and at any moment I won't even have rent money? (Student correspondence)...

Imagine for a moment you're driving home from work, and that you've just come from having a pretty rough day. As you drive along, your eyes see the road before you, but your mind is in the past. It's very busy re-running all of the day's unpleasant events. Over and over again, you feel that painful stab of some thoughtless remark someone cruelly blurted out, or the embarrassment of that stupi...

The pain of any worry or fear is not imagined, but its source is -- as when we become anxious over a lost key that we have mistakenly placed in our jacket pocket instead of our usual pants pocket. Such fearful worry is created by becoming instantly identified with certain habitual negative images flooding through us, the fact of which goes to prove: Much, if not all of our pain in life (that...