Imagine how different life would be if we understood that nothing happens to us that isn't sent our way to help us learn more about the eternal nature of love.
Waking up to ourselves describes a whole new level of being self-aware. We no longer know ourselves simply through the thoughts we have about ourselves, but we can now see these formerly self-defining thoughts as being only one small aspect of who we really are. So it can be said that awakening begins with being able to see that we have been...
As paradoxical as it seems, our journey to reach the undiscovered territory within our own consciousness -- this distant High Country above and beyond thought whose Promised Land lies yet hidden within us -- begins with a strange and often shocking discovery: What needs to be escaped are the constraints of our own conditioned consciousness. In other words, the freedom we long for is from our p...
When this sensory mind of ours perceives life, it mistakenly sees things as happening to it from the outside in. How does this error in perception affect us? It means that we perceive life as a series of things coming at us. Everything about us is oriented outwardly, and it appears to us that our lives are being determined from the outside in.
The basic core of all true spiritual teachings is that the inner determines the outer. What this timeless idea means to us is that what we receive from life -- our experience of self in life -- is determined by how we perceive events. And how we see life is determined, each moment, by what we are looking at it through.
When we talk about making changes in ourselves, it could be said that it's like climbing a mountain. Why is the mountain a metaphor for spiritual change? There's a certain kind of effort necessary for climbing, isn't there? Also, the mountain represents a higher view. Because as you ascend the mountain, not only does the atmosphere change in terms of becoming more rarified, but every step higher up the mountain produces...
There was once a young prince who, having reached the age of majority, left home to live on a grand estate given to him by his father. He was told that if he ever needed help he was to put a light in the uppermost tower window, and his father would send a special horse and carriage to carry him to safety. However, his father also warned him that an evil wizard, an enemy of the kingdom, lived n...
Whenever you come upon a healing idea or a rescuing truth, it is almost always a surprise that you could have missed something that was so obvious for so long. Do you know the feeling? More than anything else, a glimpse of a Timeless Truth is a lot like rounding a bend and suddenly seeing something you know you knew a long, long time ago; like discovering all over again a special place you onc...
The only thing that holds us down is what we don't yet know about ourselves. This insight explains why our ability to learn the truth about ourselves, to increase our level of self understanding, is the same as being empowered to raise our own life level. If we want to grow inwardly, free ourselves from the ties that bind, we must find new ways to learn the truth about ourselves. These higher...
If our intuition can perceive that the peace we long for is inherent in this perfectly present moment we call the "Now," what is it that keep us from knowing the fulfillment of its promise within us? Let's look.
Everyone can agree that no intelligent, conscious man or woman would ever intentionally hurt him- or herself. No one would choose to ache. Yet the fact remains that all of us do hurt ourselves every day when we harbor self-compromising thoughts and feelings like anger, stress, and resentment. Even at the simplest level, there is no doubt that fear and worry take an immense toll on our health and well-being.
We are made in the image of the Divine. Now, that doesn't mean all that we hope it means. It actually means more than that! It means that you and I, as humans, exist in a temporal form that is, for all intents and purposes, a place where a host of magnificent laws and forces converge. Opposing forces reconcile and create a body that is essentially the mirror of a set of perfect opposites -- right hand, left hand, right eye, left eye.