We have in us -- built over time as part of the construct of our personality - a literal host of demands. Things that over time have been thought over and over and over again until the construction of those thoughts becomes an unconscious attitude. For instance, if you think enough times, "Why are they doing this? I shouldn't be treated like this!" Gradually, you walk around with a chip on your shoulder, but you don't know it's a chip on your shoulder...

We are created and each of us is intended to discover the truth of ourselves within ourselves; no authorities are needed. Our lives -- and all of our relationships as revealed in the present moment -- are the ground we must plow. These soils, rendered receptive through conscious humiliation, are seeded with our intention to be kind and true to one another, to give up our selfish ways, and to willingly embrace whatever life lessons we need to further...

I'm going to give you five ways to make the most out of every moment of your life. They're very simple ones. Then I'm going to explain each simple one. These actually are presented to you in a specific order because there's a broader story. Whenever I order principles, there's a broader story that's told in the collective understanding of them.

You can be self-enlightened instead of self-frightened. You have a choice. This discovery that you can always choose in favor of yourself is real excitement. You do not have to accept your present life-level. Life-level is what determines whether you sail through this life or sink in it. At present, it may seem to you as if there are times when you don't have much choice in your own life. I want you to know that this is a lie...

There is a part of us that summarily rejects the moments when we see -- by a light that we would rather not see -- our actual condition. And in that moment of helplessness, we have a choice to recognize that were it not given to us in that moment by something greater than what we don't want to see, we would never be able to see it... and never have the opportunity to transcend ourselves...

I am always surprised by your strength -- by how happy I am to be too weak to do anything except completely accept you. What is this power of yours? How shall I understand it? 

Are you a Gathering Force? When you come, do you collect all the parts of me that have wandered off high and low looking for you... somehow drawing them all into one place wherein their deep peace is that they once again know that they need never look for anything...

The truth is that letting go is very simple and, above all, natural; as natural for you and I as it is for a tree to shed the heavy, sun-ripened fruit that clings to its branches. Why? Because both man and tree, in fact all living things, are created to drop what is no longer needed. For the tree, the falling fruit carries its matured seed to the ground. No unnatural force is necessary. In a similar fashion -- that is to say, under higher but equally exacting laws...

There are three ways to get what one wants from life: industry, cunning, or love. Industry is good but at best conditional, for it is subject to the passage and ravages of time. The "crafty" inevitably trap themselves. Love, on the other hand, liberates those who seek its company, and it is timeless. When all is said and done, this order of love has the last word because it is its own reward: whatever we are willing to let it make of us, it fashions from itself.

There isn't one thing, in every moment of our life, that isn't a mirror. Not one. Only we've never been taught that there is an invisible, eternal, incorruptible intelligence that is literally both that which we see and ourselves seeing it.

One of the greatest gifts that a man or woman can be given in this world (and only if they ask properly) is to understand that everything that happens to them - no matter what -- is for their greater good. It makes no difference what it is -- call it the worst thing in the world -- and most of us have had the experience of recognizing there were times when if we could have thrown away that moment full of fear, anger, resentment, we would have thrown it away.

We're always trying, one way or the other, to grab and maintain something that will make us feel safe and whole forever. The pursuit of that wholeness, of that security, is through what we commonly call "powers." When we think of our security, we think of the powers that we must have to maintain it -- whether it's trying to please other people, trying to have, keep, and gain more possessions, or struggling to get some kind of control over a relationship or...

If we want new answers to old self-defeating questions such as "Why me?" -- we're going to have to use our mind in a new way. If we want new answers, real answers, we need new questions. First, we must realize that our stressful experiences are not caused by people or events. They are caused by our reactions to them. I know this is different than most of us feel, and yet, we can see that we have changed the people and even the events in our...