Looking at life through the eyes of resistance is not unlike looking at our own reflection in a pool of troubled waters; everything gets distorted. In fact, when seeing our lives through the narrow bars of some unwanted state, nothing is the way we see it.

Most of us hold the unquestioned belief that our hearts and minds are at peace before one of life's "waves" washes in to disturb us. But if we take away the prejudice of self-pleasing images -- and add the ease with which we are disturbed by unwanted moments -- we have good cause to suspect something entirely different about ourselves. Could a truer view of what takes place in such times of...

How would you like to live from a nature where no matter what happens, no matter what comes at you, as soon as whatever it is lands on you, it's changed into something good? "Oh gosh, wow! You mean I could live from a part of myself where it wouldn't matter what it was that came to it -- no matter how dark, fearsome, hateful, worried, angry, no matter what it was -- as soon as it touched me...

Depending on how the day breaks for us, we often find ourselves feeling discontent about our life, experiencing any or all of the following conditions whenever we: Find ourselves unable to change or control someone near to us. Take a close look at our physical appearance and find we are somehow lacking. Run headlong into self-compromising behaviors beyond our seeming strength or ability to change...

When we're negative -- in a "power struggle" with someone over whatever is being contested -- we're reduced to being little more than a puppet. We're literally "strung out" -- momentarily animated -- by unseeing forces in us that can only do one thing: mechanically oppose whatever seems to oppose them.

What is it, then, that balances? What is that which allows this nature -- this divided nature, this nature that works in opposites -- what is it that would permit it the peace it seeks? What is it that creates balance in a human being?

Useless suffering can't be separated from useless resistance. The more you resist something, the more you suffer, believing that somehow or other your resistance to what you don't want to do (or be) is going to separate you or liberate you from the thing you don't want. Resistance is an unconscious form of attention, and the more attention you give to something you don't want, the more of it you get.

When it comes to our wish to make real changes in ourselves, good intentions cost (us) nothing... and that's why the road to hell is paved with useless coins. On the other hand, making a conscious effort to change -- in the moment that calls for it -- comes with the cost of seeing ourselves as we really are. This awareness shows us not only the possibility of being released from our worry and fear...

When suddenly -- through a sense of similarity -- I'm made present to some positive, uplifting quality outside and within myself, I am happy. I lend myself to it without doubt. But in moments I am introduced to something negative inside myself by an event that I don't want, I have to find a reason for it being there.

We act every moment in our life from one thing and one thing only: that which (in us) is the knower of that moment. We act from what we know. As we are now, our actions -- based on what we know -- are predicated on a certain knowledge that appears with the reaction that tells us the meaning of the moment. And no more do we receive and are told the meaning of the moment...

The reason that we do what we do is because we are looking for the truth of ourselves. It doesn't matter - wanting to learn how to cook, wanting to start a new business, looking for a new relationship, wanting to learn how to write a book, surf, sumo wrestling - whatever it may be. And as many people as there are hearing or reading this... wherever you are, all over the world and in this room...

As a race of beings, we have become completely complicit in the pain that visits us. A thought from the past pops up and punishes us. Someone says something we don't like, and we try to punish them and feel the pain of the blame that we place on them. There is an endless series of relationships with a part of our own nature that has convinced us that the pain is produced by a condition outside of us...