Special Lessons

What good is it to find a solution, some seeming strength, that doesn't really resolve your problem, but that is just another form of secret self-deception? Outside of its power to help you temporarily feel better about the weakness that just claimed you, what good is the "strength" of being able to endlessly explain yourself to yourself? Of being able to "intelligently" justify some deliberately hurtful act towards another?

When life falls apart, or threatens to come unglued, it seems almost natural to carry around some desperate, stressed, or depressed emotional state. But why cling to something that makes us ache? The answer is surprising, but evident, once we're aware of what's actually taking place within us.

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.

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.

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!

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.

Have you ever gone through a crisis of some kind, and after 20 or 30 years of the same lesson coming back, you realize you have been walking along the same dark road? I know that it gets tough sometimes, but those of us who have any love whatsoever for what is true, good, and Divine should be encouraged. Because you have no idea what's on our side, how much is trying to be given to us at all times.

It wasn't that long ago that men and women understood that the purpose of prayer wasn't to bring things into their lives to make their lives better. It was so that through prayer, they could bring themselves into a completely different order of their own consciousness.