You can't separate the meaning of this life from who you are and your relationship to it. They are inseparable. The kingdom of heaven is within. What do you think that means? Some lost horizon that one day you're going to arrive at? No, it means that this very moment is the expression of the kingdom and everything in the kingdom is present to you if you will be present to it.

Topics covered: You postpone confronting what you need to see in yourself; Any justification you have for your negativity is a lie; We have a nature that wants to rest on what it thinks it has won, but you can't win anything; You live from a nature that knows itself through thought; The safety of a quiet mind is that nothing can enter into it unannounced; Being identified with the dream state...

Featured Study Group Topic for the Week of July 27, 2015. There is no more troubled person on earth than the one who thinks he sees life as it is when, truth be told, all he really 'sees' is what his lower nature is telling him is true... about himself. And so he stars in an ongoing solo performance whose self-selected premise is the same as his pain: 'Everything that happens, moment to moment...

Can you think of a way in which you regularly sabotage yourself? You sabotage yourself when "something" in you acts against yourself. Now, for most of us, we have a passing understanding of an idea like that because we recognize that we don't want to hurt ourselves. We don't want to hurt others. We don't want to be a burden to this planet. We don't want to do a lot of the things we do.

When we think about any painful event, be it three minutes or thirty years old, we look at nothing more than a shadow of what once was -- something that is no more! The catch here is that these same thoughts -- these shadows of experiences gone by -- seem to have a life of their own, and in a way they do, for each carries with it a full complementary set of emotional baggage -- the still-smold...

The awareness of the whole of ourselves is the cancellation of time... for in this undivided state of consciousness no memory is needed to produce a sense of self...

There are in existence, as part of creation, extraordinary primordial opposites. We know them as darkness and light, expansion and contraction, attraction and resistance. We don't know anything about resistance. What we know is to be ruled by resistance in our lives, instead of recognizing it as being part of a creative force meant for us to develop.

All of life's innumerable "shake-ups, breakups, and wake-ups" take place within what we call the "present moment." This ever-open window into life--through which we see the newness of life unfolding before us--is something much, much greater than all of the individual events that pass through it to reveal it.

How is it we don't see how much our life is spent worrying, and struggling to acquire whatever powers we imagine we must have in order to finally arrive at... a life free of worry and struggle?

More than a few times I've received letters from students wanting to know about certain strong feelings they've had concerning their wish to "fly" or otherwise levitate (in some way). Most of us have had a wish like this; let's look into it. The following thoughts are for anyone who has ever felt this longing, and especially for those who are confused by it...given the great contrast between...

Comes the fall, particularly near its end, and the ground on the little mountain top where I live is literally golden brown with all of the oak leaves that have parted ways with their seasonal parents. It's so beautiful to watch the thousands of leaves fall like slow motion snowflakes...finding their way to the forest floor and their temporary resting place there. Then comes the wind, and th...

The truth is that letting go is very simple and, above all, natural; as natural for you and I as it is for a tree to shed the heavy, sun-ripened fruit that clings to its branches. Why? Because both man and tree, in fact all living things, are created to drop what is no longer needed. For the tree, the falling fruit carries its matured seed to the ground. No unnatural force is necessary. In a similar fashion -- that is to say, under higher but equally exacting laws...