Have you ever looked down at a sidewalk or parking lot and marveled at a single blade of grass that had somehow found the will and the way to break through the pavement out into the fresh air and sunlight? When we think of a titanic struggle, we don't usually think of a little seed of grass buried in the darkness and fighting to get out in the light. And yet, even though we may not see it as w...

In the kingdom of heaven, integration and illumination are one and the same movement and moment.

Featured Study Group Topic for the Week of August 8, 2016. Part 1: True humility -- the higher state of being born only of agreeing to see, consciously, one's own helplessly-conflicted mechanical self -- is the holy humus required for one's rebirth. Part 2: What is any psychological suffering -- that always unexpected shockwave of anguish in some uninvited moment -- other than the agonizing ef...

Part I: Seen properly, what is any dark mental or emotional habit -- such as regretting our life, cultivating resentments, or fearfully trying to protect ourselves from what "may be" -- other than the unconscious practice of perfecting what punishes us? Part II: Resisting any negative state merely helps it realize its full potential to make you its prisoner!...

Part 1 It isn't the "emptiness" of life that we reject; what we resist in such moments is what we have filled that emptiness with. Part 2 In order for something to "appear" it must have an empty space into which it can appear; and for something to "disappear," it must have an empty space into which to vanish. This means that emptiness is neither empty nor full.

When you set about trying to reconcile or fix an unwanted situation, it feels like you are being very present and active towards it, but you're actually being passive to a part of you that first brought up the very condition you're resisting and is now keeping you in conflict over it.

Resistance to any unwanted condition ensures you will never be released from it, and here's why: you can't 'not want' some state of self without some unseen part of you wanting you to have just that feeling. So, the more you don't want it, the more you get it! Grand summary: resistance is negative identification.

See that you are caged by resistance, reactions and distractions that seek to avoid any kind of empty feeling. Agree to enter into the "big empty" and see that the avoiding nature is filled with unconscious resistance. The more empty you are willing to be the more you will understand the nature that wants to fill the emptiness with the noise of self.

Here is why a mind awakened to its own native silence never gets into a stew over what to do with any negative thought that appears within it: Just as light makes obvious whatever form is brought into it, so silence can "see" a troubled thought for what it is in reality: nothing more than an agitated noise fashioned into a familiar shape; a discovery that -- once made -- requires nothing of us...

There can be no fearful thought of any time to come -- let alone the anxious struggle to control -- or otherwise avoid it -- without resisting a moment that has no existence outside of how we’ve unconsciously imagined it!

There is only one reason why we become emotionally negative, let alone surrender ourselves to its dark and debilitating embrace: We have forgotten that we have a choice as to what we love, and whose company we keep, accordingly.

Until we awaken enough to see that within us lives the same nature as our "enemy" of the moment, we will never know the freedom or the forgiveness found in this great liberating truth: no enemy exists for us until the judge within us makes one so.