Special Lessons

Life, in the broadest sense of it, both spiritually and materially, is an expression of an eternal descending and ascending set of forces: "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" -- the principle of expansion and contraction, light and darkness, ascending and descending archetype ideas then brought into physical creation.

Just as a ship lost at sea must make a course correction if it hopes to reach a safe harbor, so must the aspirant be willing to be corrected by life for there to be any hope of sighting heaven's shore. And it isn't really so much that life itself corrects us as it is that it serves to reveal us to ourselves. When it does, the choice is ours whether to be self-correcting or deflect the light of revelation that calls for us to change...

Here's a challenging idea: those who don't know their true identity do not know that they don't know who they are. It's a kind of spiritual amnesia produced by having assumed a false identity without knowing it. How is that possible?

Regardless of when in time, or where on earth, a truth bright with promise appears, its effect is always the same. By its deft touch, "the sleeper awakens" and the meaning of our life takes on a whole new magnitude. The Spirit that called inspired seekers who have gone before us -- that awakened their hearts, and quickened their minds -- so that they might have "eyes to see, and ears to hear" -- is the same spirit calling us...

When you think of a single beautiful flower in springtime -- while it may stand with petals and leaves that look a certain way -- you'll never find a single flower the same as any other flower. Can you understand that the life of that flower is not the life alone that you see coming out of the ground? That flower belongs to a much greater life than the individual expression that you say is beautiful.

Putting our life in God's hands does not mean that we hand Him our wish list for life, but rather that we make His life our wish. When God's will becomes our sole wish in life, then whatever happens to us not only fulfills our wish, but we realize it has always been our wish right from the start.

What would happen to any of us if we knew, without having to take thought, that the universe was set up to help us succeed with becoming fearless because we understand the right attitude to take... no matter what the moment seems to bring?

Whenever we find ourselves identified with some dark stream of thoughts and feelings, as opposed to being quietly aware of their downward-trending presence, we fall -- in that same moment -- into a world filled with unwanted negative states.

Key to sailing through any crisis is learning to deal first with the fact of fear, instead of what fear says is the fact. What am I looking at when I'm dealing with what fear says is the fact? An event has taken place and fear says, "Oh my God, look at this!" But the event is gone, so what am I looking at? Am I looking at the fact? No.

Unconscious desire is the root of corruption. What I desire, what you desire -- whatever it may be -- we can find a way, as surely as the sun will rise, to justify what we want. And because we can justify what we want, it means, at any given point in time, the end will justify the means. "I need this because I was treated like this when I was growing up;" "I need this because I'm not as attractive as someone else;" "I have to have this because I'm getting older"...

Stop being a victim of "Yesterday's News"! Calling on "what was" to deal with "what is"... is like being stranded on a deserted island, without any food, and hoping to make your growing hunger pains go away by reading and re-reading "Best Places to Dine Around Town"... the one magazine that washed up with you when you staggered onto shore.

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.