Special Lessons

From this day forward, be a careful observer of the moving pictures in your own mind. Learn to watch all the various scenes without casting yourself as any of the players on the screen. Remember, nothing you see in that darkened theater is who you really are.

Any true self-aware state must include the presence of a humility that tempers the temptation inherent in all forms of self-evaluation; otherwise, what we might call self-awakening is really just a form of secret self-admiration.

The real adversary in our lives, that proverbial thorn in our side that leaves us aching and angry, and then sends us looking for someone to blame, is not what we have always believed. It is not something "out there." It's something "in here": an intimate enemy.

If our wish is to discover a new and higher kind of love - the only one that can empower us to transcend our differences with our partner - then we must begin to see our old excuses for finding fault with him or her as...faulty!

It feels like I have been a seeker forever, but have not yet found the enlightenment I have been seeking. Is enlightenment something that happens, or is it just an understanding?

Whenever we can't understand the nature of some unwanted situation we fall, by default, into the hands of a nature whose answer to this ache is always the same: get negative and then try to protect ourselves from anything that can't be otherwise controlled. The rest takes place in us on automatic pilot:

It is no stretch of the imagination to say that many days most of us wrestle with some form of discontentment in life. Add to this disgruntled condition an equal amount of time spent searching for solutions to "cure" this confliction, and we come to realize a great deal of our time on earth is spent trying to dodge feelings of being discontented!

Any time we feign anything, we do so out of fear that without that "persona" to protect us--to make that impression we want--we won't get what we want. This whole way of thinking is secret self-sabotage. Your consideration of the two special insights that follow will start you down the path to a whole new kind of self-command.

Outgrowing the problems created in the way we think begins with realizing the need to not only understand the nature of these invisible building blocks known as our thoughts, but to be able to peer into the structure of the invisible world these same thoughts create.

All through the ages the Wise Ones have spoken of an invisible kingdom--a timeless ground known as the Now--that will confer to those who realize it a peace that surpasses all understanding.

Before you can have a different life: before you can be happier, wiser, more at peace, and in quiet command of yourself, you must first *be* different. Being is everything.

Our resolve to live a real life, an awakened life, is strengthened when our self-study reveals that at any moment we're not consciously in command of ourselves, a mechanical nature is in charge of us, directing us to look for someone, something to blame for our pain.