Special Lessons

Living within us dwells an order of being that knows, without thinking about it, what is authentically good for us. The problem isn't that this higher level of being--with its natural, calm command--is actually missing just when we need it most. The real problem is that we forget it!

We have a nature that thinks about itself -- a nature that weighs itself on a scale that our culture has created and our thoughts have unconsciously adopted. Unexamined, this mind is a virtual torture device, keeping us locked within its own limitations. In the absence of practical thought (the only right capacity of the mind), there is always some painful reaction...

Every truth ever discovered -- each new light that will ever burn bright -- already exists in our consciousness. All we will ever know and share about love, humility, compassion, and sacrifice -- the secrets that will reveal and then resolve old sorrows -- awaits us within ourselves. Hidden in this truth is our great promise, both as individuals and as a race of beings...

Just as our bodies grow healthy or not, according to what we take into our mouths, so too do we grow into wisdom, strength, or grace according to what we attend to with our mind. Our thoughts, like all energetic life forms, attract to themselves natures like themselves. The thoughts of a fellow not only flock together, but seek and are sought out by similar invisible creatures...

Can we see how, in one form or another, everything in creation longs to touch and to be touched? Flowers and trees stretch their leaves and limbs up to the sun, just as it reaches down to touch them. After all, to what end the timeless nature of such radiance, if not to grant life to whatever forms it temporarily animates?

Regardless of the assertion of any negative state that seeks to convince you otherwise (using its painful presence within you as "proof" that the prison you're locked within will stand until the end of time), apply this one great truth: All self-punishing states are "lies." They must break down if they don't succeed in breaking down your willingness to test their reality. How do you...

How is it possible for a man or woman to be both prisoner and, without ever knowing it, his or her own prison maker at the same time? Each time the me mind envisions some future event, it's actually trying to find a feeling of security for itself. But the only security this lower nature can ever know is imaginary. So it has to dream up one scene after another where somehow you'll come out a winner...

We each have, and operate from, a false nature that is a jumble of our memories, conditioning, and temperamental qualities. It is this unsuspected false nature that meets the world each day, responding to and interpreting each and every one of life's fluctuations. It is very important for us to begin to understand that of themselves these ever-changing conditions in life are neutral, but the false...

Everything under the sun wants to be loved. Trees reach up for the sunlight that brings them life. Flowers need the touch of the bees that pollinate them. Babies cry out to be nourished and protected. We can state this same celestial principle in different words: Everything in existence seeks what it needs to complete itself... and this includes negative states like anger, resentment...

In order to nurture our own awakening, we must first see the need to let go of those parts of us that we sense no longer serve us. This new kind of self-awareness is the interior “seed state” needed to outgrow and transcend our former level of self. But these seeds of higher self-knowledge must, in turn, become new actions if they are to awaken us to our immortal Self...

At our current level of consciousness, we experience ourselves as beings who have a certain emotional state of energy come into us, which defines and shapes our individuality. But the fact of the matter is that there is no such self. Not really. There are just these states of energy and the fleeting sense of self that their undetected possession produces...

Power -- who has it and who doesn't -- seems to determine who pushes and who gets shoved in this world. And given our preference, if we must choose one, we would rather be doing the pushing. The only problem is that on the level of this field of choices, whether to push or be pushed, everyone loses because push always comes to shove...