Special Lessons

The basic core of all true spiritual teachings is that the inner determines the outer. What this timeless idea means to us is that what we receive from life -- our experience of self in life -- is determined by how we perceive events. And how we see life is determined, each moment, by what we are looking at it through.

Little by little, the purpose of life for men and women has become directed to one thing: I want to get to the point in my life where there are no more disturbances. The purpose of this life is not to avoid disturbance, or to find a disturbance-free existence! If you examine this, you can see the fact of it for yourself. Are you getting more relaxed in life when it comes to people and problems?

Everyone wonders whether or not there is one great secret for truly successful living. There is. And it is not a secret. It has been quietly, steadily telling itself right in front of us all along. We just couldn't hear it over the clatter and chatter of our own secret demands. Listen quietly for a moment: everything can change right now. Learning to hear this supreme secret is no more difficult than choosing whether to swim against a current or to let it carry you safely...

If there's one thing that should be more than evident to everyone on the planet, it's that the level of pain in it is increasing. We'll prove this in a number of different ways before we're done with our talk, but we always want to move away from what's planetary and get personal right away. So let me ask you a question, and I'll state it in simple terms. How many of you suspect you're imbalanced? Human beings are imbalanced.

Once something has outlived its usefulness, its purpose for being in existence is no longer needed. The leaf that captures a stream of sunlight and then transfers its energy to the tree serves one purpose in the spring and summer and another completely different purpose through the fall and winter. Its form first appears as an agent to help feed the tree and then, as it dies and falls to the earth, the same leaf becomes food for the tree.

The truth that sets us free is not for hire; it does not so much "work" for us as it is our silent partner, producing the new life we long for. This means that first, we must be receptive to truth's instruction in the Now; only conscious awareness of our aching can lead us to what authentically answers it, ending it. But secondly, we must -- ourselves -- be true in the same moment to what we know is the truth of that moment.

It's hard to believe that we have a nature that would rather destroy someone else -- punish them, resent them -- than see itself as it is. Most of us still don't believe it, but when things don't happen the way we want them to, what becomes of us? What do we express? You know the answer, don't you?

Whatever we try to go around in ourselves guarantees it will come around again, which is why the things we fear in life and about ourselves always tend to reappear. Here's the law that governs this relationship: whatever we resist in life persists as it does because whatever we oppose grows!

It is not in our power to change anyone else. On the other hand, our experience always brings us to this moment of truth where we have the possibility of changing what happens to us. And so it follows that the person to whom and in whom the Truth begins to become a living force, cannot have a bad day or a bad relationship.

Rushing somewhere, through anything, in the hope of finding some imagined peace of mind is like looking for your heart in someone else's body!

The Divine knows we are ready to see the true solution to our suffering only when - and as - we realize we must no longer make excuses for any moment when, and where we miss the mark.

Seldom do we know a greater need for making a fresh start than in those mind-numbing moments when we find ourselves feeling thrown for a loss. These feelings of loss often leave an unconscious, invisible residue of fear which tends to taint every area of our lives with distasteful timidity, born of the neurotic suspicion that in some way, life is conspiring to take something away from us.