Special Lessons

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!

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!

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.

Real spiritual growth is a kind of passing; it is the old giving way to the new because you no longer want what you once were. In that quiet passing comes the Self that was always there before (within), but that you are now at last communing with. Every single longing, every prayer you utter is for what is felt to be...

You don't have to believe that there's a fearless world above your present mind. You can live within its perfect order any time you choose. Make this choice for your own freedom starting right now.

What many of us have yet to understand is that dark, negative reactions to unwanted events do nothing to cure them. In fact, these painful impulses have just the opposite effect. They actually "cement" things -- fixing both themselves and the false sense of self through which they then are empowered to run their unhappy course.

We are a peculiar race of beings. On one hand, each of us professes to be concerned with growing and self-developing while, on the other hand, none of us ever wants to be wrong. This is a paralyzing contradiction...

To see the truth of the above is to understand how important it is for us to be as fully mindful as possible in the midst of a disagreement with our partner.