The more we are willing to learn about the way fear works, the less power it has to work its ways on us.

In this excerpt from the Intimate Enemy you will discover a new understanding to heal the pain that arises out of our own misperception.

What is the healthy and enlightened attitude to have towards my financial responsibility to my family? I find it hard to be at peace with the pressure of bills to pay. I can see how my mind is just reacting to anxious thoughts of dire circumstances that are not likely to come to pass, but of course, there are "real" consequences that can't be ignored. On the householder's path, I sometimes fin...

What is meditation, and is there some "best" method for its practice? What is prayer and what's the most effective way to pray? Should I be really be asking God for specific things? How can I practice ceaseless prayer? When I sit down to meditate, thoughts crowd in, and I can't seem to find a truly quiet moment. How am I ever going to change if I can't even do this simple exercise?...

Have you ever noticed that when you're under the cloud of some negative state, what you do to try to "make things better" actually makes the situation worse? Struggling to free yourself from your own negative reactions is a bit like throwing gasoline onto a fire, isn't it? Recognizing that you get trapped in this pattern of taking action that neither relieves nor rescues you from...

Topics covered: Everything that we see is through its reflection in our consciousness, including physical objects; Beauty is in our consciousness, not just in the outside condition that it sees, but it needs the condition to reveal that the observer is the observed; If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, then so is fear, doubt and anxiety; Our present consciousness is mirrored in the...

We live from a bottomless basket of endless wants that drive us everywhere, including crazy! Hoping to find comfort and life direction in your wants is like trying to find shade under a swarm of stinging flies -- while it may be cooler, you also have to keep running. Your pleasure is your pain. Real pleasure is not the opposite of pain, it is the absence of it. Think about it. What you re...

The reason why discouraging states hold us captive as they do is that they convince us that the limited darkness of their reality is all there is for us to live within! But such small states only have this last word about the world we live in as long as we agree with what they tell us is true about our possibilities. We can do better than consent to live like this, and here are the steps that...

Before we can learn how to step outside the pattern set into motion by some habitual negative reaction toward others, we need a better understanding of the underlying forces that create it. In other words, we must find a way to look at these same moments through a "new set of eyes."

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.

Just as our bodies grow healthy or not, according to what we take into our mouths, so too do we grow into wisdom, strength, or grace according to what we attend to with our mind. Our thoughts, like all energetic life forms, attract to themselves natures like themselves. The thoughts of a fellow not only flock together, but seek and are sought out by similar invisible creatures...

In any given moment there's always something higher to do with your life than sit there and suffer over what you think you can't have, do, or be.