By any account, the recent news of high profile suicides is sad, and all condolences go out to family and friends. But the serious aspirant must look into this kind of unhappy event with a wish to read between the lines, to see and realize the underlying story that leads to such tragedies, and to make that understanding personally transformative. How is it that one with so much knowledge, for...

Rebecca had decided that her best chance of getting hired by a company doing geological survey work in the Alaskan wilderness was to earn a private license to fly twin-engine planes. A few days later she began taking lessons from a wise old bush pilot, highly respected throughout the region for his cool and collected ways of dealing with the worst possible situations. After the mandatory gro...

Our true nature -- the free mind -- is a perfect warning system for detecting and, with our cooperation, rejecting any and all psychic intruders. Its uncommon intelligence never complies with the presence, or demands, of any fearful negative state.

There is a direct and proportionate relationship between the degree of inconsolable pain that we have and a deep-seated misunderstanding of our real purpose for being alive.

Part I: Like a small child drags his or her cherished blanket along behind them where it is pulled through whatever it finds on the floor, so too do we drag along our unwanted moments in life... Comforted on the one hand by the familiarity of these lingering associations, even while the weight of these moments pulls us down punishing us with their painful refrains. Part II: We would all reali...

There will be many, many times in our journey beyond ourselves where to put the truth first means we must see and admit where we haven't been truthful with ourselves.

The goal of all truthful teachings handed down through the ages has been to encourage individuals to follow the path to a more expansive existence.

Within the space of each beat of your heart, you get the exact measure of the answer you gave to life the moment before.

In order to let go of any painful past condition -- so there is never again a moment where regret or sorrow is pulling us down -- we must allow every movement, each unexpected event encountered, every thought and feeling -- no matter its character -- to have its own life. If we will attempt to view life from this new and higher understanding -- that everything...

The unconscious mind forever distorts everything it sees in order to justify its concealed intentions.

Someone I was deeply in love with has left me after several years together. I am crushed. I have dated others, but none compare. How do I pull myself out of obsessive thoughts about what I once had? If there's really a way to take the torment out of personal loss, I want to know about it. But the whole idea of not feeling loss also frightens me in a way that's hard to describe. I mean, what...

Make this last exercise your constant companion. Within it I have summarized the most important lessons of this book. The next time you run into some familiar blockage or begin to feel unsuited to face some new and difficult personal challenge, don't do what you've always done before. Don't try to think your way around it. You no longer want a way around your troubles because what goes around...