Real forgiveness takes place when we understand that the only reason that our friends and family were the way they were is because of the unconscious pain they were in. When we finally understand our own pain, then there is compassion.

When we look out at the world and don't like what we see, is it really the world we see that is making us sick? Or is the sickness we see in the world the result of the same old reactions that a hundred million human beings have had a hundred million times? The sickness is in this consciousness that has made the world into what it is.

The same nagging, "What should I do?" questions have been asked on this planet for thousands and thousands of years, and yet no answer has been able to reconcile the pained part of us that keeps asking. To understand that is the beginning of a new relationship with the part of us that is asking the question. What if we began to suspect that the painful questions...

The winter solstice represents the time of the year that the light comes into the darkness. It is an outer representation of an inner exchange that is always taking place within us, so that we can be brought into a greater life and fulfill the promise we all have to be a better human being. It is only as we are delivered into this other order of light and understanding that we...

There is always something talking to us, and we don't know better than to talk back to it. The next time you find yourself caught in negative dark dialog, try to see that it doesn't exist without a corresponding so-called positive aspect, promising the end of dark days and a brighter future. In that awareness you stand in the middle as a point of observation, as opposed to...

Most people spend their entire lives exploring worldly sensation. But we eventually come to a place where we realize that we have come to the end of exploring the world through our senses, and begin the process of exploring the interior world. The exploration of the interior world is mind exploring mind, instead of body exploring body, which is the activity of our outwardly directed senses.

The big problem that we have is not that right ideas don't blow our mind from time to time, because sometimes they do. The problem is that our minds don't stay blown apart. We can't seem to sustain that sense of awe and proper gratitude. Only sustained immersion in the living higher principles and powers -- that real life is always freely giving -- can bring thought to a...

Question: How do you integrate and apply the principle that "I am bigger than this moment" when your mind is programmed otherwise? How do you practice stopping reacting? Answer: You don't practice stopping reacting, you see that you can't stop reacting.

In the highest parts of our consciousness, there is a living relationship whose meaning is inseparable from the world that it sees and experiences. There is no need to "take thought" in order to know that we are alive. To think for ourselves properly means to be aware of our reactions to the world, and to not allow those reactions to run wild on their own...

We don't typically have much awareness of what is timeless because we are usually the prisoner of a mind that is seeking to become something in time. However, it is possible to see -- without taking thought -- that everything eternal is already in perfect harmony. This means that we can stop struggling uselessly to put the Universe back into order.

The value of finding a true spiritual work group is that the whole body of the group -- together -- can help individuals reconnect with inner truths that they have lost contact with. There is a unity that exists in the consciousness of true spiritual aspirants who understand that the experience of one... is the experience of all.

Whenever there is an unconscious inner dialog going on in our heads, we are actually looking in a mirror that we don't know is a mirror. And what we see in our mind's eye talks to us about what we must make ourselves into so that we might finally find rest and be at peace. Freedom from the dark inner dialog begins by seeing that the "self" that is talking to us only exists as long as we...