Part I: Who serves only himself in this life may be first to find a seat at the table, but he eats from a plate filled only with emptiness.

Part II: If we must dream, let us long for that life beyond ourselves; for who desires things already known, or otherwise imagined in forms reconfigured from fantasies too well worn? Behold! It is the Unknown Life that calls to us from a Desire untold; too distant and dark to be seen, but nearer to us than the very light in which we dwell.

Part III: While desire may draw us into our various relationships in life, it also destroys them as, inevitably, we find ourselves withdrawing from what no longer serves to please us. But Real Love transcends the desire that gives it birth, just as light escapes the fire from whose flames it is cast.

Part I:
We cannot control the way the world turns. We cannot change day into night. We cannot keep what is not ours, and we cannot hide these facts from ourselves no matter how hard we try. But what we are given to do, and that turns out to be the one power of ours truly capable of transforming our experience of life, is that we can choose the internal company we keep. It is our created right to be in relationship with only those thoughts and feelings whose presence is both pleasing to us, and our Higher Purpose.

Part II: Any thought or feeling that jumps up within us to explain to us why we are the way we are, that wants to help us justify ourselves after we catch a glimpse of something less than flattering about ourselves - appears there within us for only one reason. Let's see what it is: It wants to pass itself off as our friend-in-need; a feat it does by working to soften the blow of our having seen some formerly unsuspected truth about our present nature. This would-be friend is our secret enemy! Here's the proof of this truth: what is True never needs an agent of any kind to soft-pedal its presence. Truth is Living Light, and nothing is more gentle than that!

Part I:
Life itself has never weighed-in so heavily upon us as to hurt us; rather it is we who -- in ignorance of reality -- carelessly attribute weight to events that are essentially without substance, causing ourselves to suffer nothing less than the fervent magnitude of our own imagination.

Part II:
The degree to which we feel ourselves confined by any circumstance in life is directly proportionate to how our own conditioned thoughts have defined the same. Now, in contrast to this self-imposed sense of captivity, consider the following truth: the True Present moment, by virtue of its ever-unfolding nature, is essentially un-definable... Which means that whatever seems to be our "confined" condition must be the secret doing of some unseen act of self-definition! A new Freedom dawns with the light of this discovery.

Each real life-lesson gained, each timeless Truth gleaned by going through what we would have rather not gone through, confirms a great secret unknown by the masses: the whole universe had to have participated in that moment of our transformation, else none of the necessary elements involved could have been in the right place at the right time to deliver that perfectly tailored lesson. Here we find personal evidence of what new physics now professes as true. Our life sits at the very center of a universe that revolves around it. But to this wondrous discovery we must add one more insight: As this is true for "my" life, it must be equally so for that of everyone else. Each of us lives in the heart of this Great Center around which everything eternally turns. And the sooner we awaken to this Great Life Lesson -- that all of us are (at) cause for the creation of our lives -- the sooner will also pass away all of the conflict in this weary world of ours.

Part I:

Loneliness stalks the heart that stands outside the present moment, looking back upon itself and feeling the pain of being without a love. If only this same heart, unknowingly divided, could see that this painful loneliness is produced by its own unhappy considerations of itself, then -- upon returning Home to its native Wholeness -- this heart now reunited would realize the lasting Love it could never find outside of itself.

Part II:

Just as we cannot hope to catch and keep a cooling breeze on a hot summer's eve, but only stand still there -- grateful for the moment of its passing -- neither can we take hold of what is True or born of Love. Like the flame of a candle that comforts us on a dark night, Truth and Love may not be held by us, even though we are made for one another; for any movement made toward them, to possess their peaceful Presence, only causes them to flicker and go out.

Part I: Be encouraged by this truth and then do the inner work to realize the freedom it holds for you: Life itself never stands in our way. It never intends to hold us down. If something is seen by us as restricting our way, then, instead of backing away in resentment from what amounts to a vision of life provided for us by our own thickened thoughts about what we cannot be, let us turn our attention to the parts of us that habitually believe in such barriers and learn to walk through these false notions as we do through late afternoon shadows.

Part II: Any pleasure sought by the self to help bring its pain to an end does not help end this pain but, in fact, only secretly conditions the same self to run through a continuous cycle of unconscious pleasure and pain; where each pleasure gained serves only to ensure the need for, and continuance of, the pain this self needs in order to later please itself.

Part I:

If we could only learn to go consciously quiet in the face of some unwanted or otherwise fearful moments, then we would realize a kind of Real miracle: for in that same intentional silence (of ours) we would hear this adversary before us begin to tell us all we need to know about the meaning of its fearful appearance, as well as what actions to take -- if any at all -- to put us upon the best path to a peaceful solution.

Part II:

We cannot protect ourselves from what we fear in life and be free of fear. The only way anyone ever gets "around" a fearful moment is by a route that brings him back to it!

Part I:

The pain in being a human being is not because we are divided in our soul, but because we are created to be Whole in God. If we had not this vestige of Holiness we would never know the pain of being apart from it.

Part II:

The one thing that never dawns upon people who are always in a rush is that the only place they ever arrive at is yet another good reason to feel rushed!

Part III:

The pain of being divided does not belong to the self it creates, but this self then creates a further set of divisions which only serves to fuel both this pain and the sense of self it continues to birth.

Part I:

It is never the unwanted condition itself that has us stuck, but that we are unknowingly hung up in habitual thoughts and feelings about our situation. To be New we must learn to see ourselves from that part of us that knows who we really are, our True Nature, was not created to be a captive of anything!

Part II:

Just as the echo of a voice that has shouted out, "Stop making all that noise!" is itself powerless to stop the one shouting, or to otherwise effect a change in its own harsh tone, so too is the level of self that negatively reacts to any unwanted condition powerless to change its unpleasant experience of that moment, or to transcend its own unconsciously self-produced stress as it goes through this struggle.

Part III:

We must stop searching for some kind of happiness "to come" and learn what it means for us to be Whole in the present moment... For all forms of momentary happiness have proven themselves as little more than brightly colored clouds briefly set afire by the setting sun. The more we learn how to choose in favor of being true to our own True Being, the sooner we will come to realize the Timeless happiness that already awaits anyone who will seek It first.

Part I:

No animal hides in shame for being itself. No tree bends to the opinion of others. No wind avoids the granite face before it; only human beings cultivate ways in which to cower before one another, and all for the sake of winning nothing other than a fleeting feeling that for their cunning they have either stayed the tide of something unwanted or have momentarily won the object of their desire.

Part II:

Know this to be true and do not shun it because it speaks of things thought better left undisturbed: For the sake of that which is Good, there is no such thing as a "necessary evil," and whatever it is within us that states otherwise is the evil it would have us do.

Part I: When you can look a worry or anger in the eye and tell it, "There is nothing between us anymore," then you are well on your way to the birth of a new kind of freedom in you that nothing can oppose or ever take away from you!

Part II: Our problems, what amounts to our lives defined by these protracted burdens, become weightless the moment we cease to identify with them. Objectively these challenging conditions may still exist, along with our consciousness of their need to be met and resolved, but for those who will dare to drop these purely self-produced psychological weights, the burden of pain in them disappears and we are freed to meet life from a fresh new outlook.

Part I: When we feel overcome by a life seemingly turned against us, it is vital we understand these moments are not the outcome of some bitter Reality set against us. This suffering that seizes us is born of our resistance to seeing that the present foundation of our self is nothing like we had imagined it to be. Each such glimpse is a Gift of Reality, not Its denial of our hopes; for now we have a choice: either we can learn to let go of the errant dreamer and build upon the Truths revealed, or... we can increase our conflict by clinging to that rapidly darkening dream. Let us choose in favor of coming awake!

Part II: This world is not a theme park where those with the "most" are empowered to choose the best rides, or are otherwise allowed to sit out the ones seen as being undesirable; rather this world is an active creation wherein all of us are required to ride until we realize the nature of that attraction to which we are drawn or that we drew to us! Only this order of Realization can release us from these mandatory rides of life!