"Each of us, as human beings, is created for a specific purpose. And it's impossible for any of us to understand what that purpose is as long as our present condition prohibits it. Our present condition is that we are prisoners of a sort. We remain captives (without knowing it) within the confines of a certain order of our own mind, our own consciousness, in which we were never intended to live.
"We are going to talk about a subject that is part and parcel with this kind of imprisonment that each and every one of us suffers under and within. We're going to take a long, deep look at it, and we're going to make some wonderful discoveries. We're going to find out that it is possible for us as human beings to change the kind of relationships that we have with one another — with those who have harmed us, or with ourselves and the events of our lives that have hurt us and that still hold us hostage in many ways.
"Our premise to begin with is the idea of being able to start our lives over, and the way we've been starting them over. We start our life over, only to find out that we end up in the exact same place we were when we started it over. It's just running in a circle, which is what happens to us when we don't understand our condition. So, each of us has to do some work, and nobody can do it for us. No other person can change the relationship that we presently have with life.
"The relationship that we have with life presently is by and large a cause of conflict to us. It's a cause of worry. It's a cause of sometimes bright expectations and hopes that eventually always prove themselves to be dust in the hands, because it washes right through. The wind comes along, and whatever we've built for ourselves just blows away, because that is the nature of life on this planet. It's not a bad thing that we can't keep our hands on anything. It's a good thing — except for the self that wants to hang onto everything.
"Before I can become the kind of human being who never again hurts another human being — either in deed or thought — before I can change my relationship with the world around me and the things that run through it in terms of my friends and family, I must change the relationship I have with myself. It is impossible to change the relationship that you have with the world around you without changing the relationship that you have in yourself, with yourself. This is the secret teaching of the ages."