It is one thing to acknowledge and agree with the truth that sets us free, and it's another thing to act on that knowledge. To act on the knowledge that you have means to not avoid what you know to be true in the moment when life stirs something in you. Learn to investigate and open yourself up to all that life wants to present to you, regardless of its character.

Catch every thought that wants to make you the star of the moment. See that talking to yourself about "What does this mean and how am I going to get through it" is actually self-importance having its way with you. Reach for another relationship with life in which you don't have to think incessantly and painfully about how each and every moment affects you and your imaginary reputation.

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.

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.

We don't usually think to ourselves that we're asleep and that our entire identity is the moment to moment fabrication of what we are reacting to in that instant. Until there is something that rides the waves of these reactions and sees them crest and fall, we will appear and disappear with every last wave. In watching the waves we will not mistake ourselves for being the waves.

There are so many things for a person to love, but if we ever want to be what it is that we say we want to be, then we must have one love. It is the extent to which we love -- and the degree to which we make the appropriate sacrifices for that love -- that the very thing we love rewards us with the relationship we long for.

Our work is to consistently take pictures of ourselves, to be able to step outside the stream of the mechanical, comfort-seeking, falsely-contented self so that we can start to see ourselves as we are, and not as we imagine ourselves to be.

We already have all the pain that we need to change, but none of it is conscious. Until it becomes conscious, it is impossible to change. We live in illusion, perpetuate the pain, and even add more to it whenever we avoid seeing our actual condition in the present moment.

Most of us like sitting by a river and watching the water or anything else come downstream and then disappear in the distance. When watching a river, we don't usually focus on one thing in the stream and then resist it as it floats by. We are intended to be the observer of the stream of our interior life in much the same way that we would enjoy watching a river.

We have all felt the pain that comes with resentment, anger, depression, or any other negative state. But the sense of self, the identity that seems to be real whenever we feel those states is a fabrication. That self can only continue to exist as long as we believe the story it tells us about why it is necessary to suffer.