Special Lessons

As difficult and shocking as it may be to consider, within us dwells a certain level of unconscious desire that loves... to not want. It has but one purpose: This part of us "lives" to resist anything that doesn't live up to its expectations. Why would anything want to live like that? Because what this dark nature likes most of all is being negative!

Our experience in life is what it is teaching us: that the whole business of reaching for what we do and the way we do it is incapable of producing the perfection that our heart is looking for. What is it about seeing a great performer, a great athlete, a great mind that makes them seem so special? Is it what they have been able to bring into their lives as a result of what they love? Or is it the love itself that the person has become an expression of?

There isn't one thing, in every moment of our life, that isn't a mirror. Not one. Only we've never been taught that there is an invisible, eternal, incorruptible intelligence that is literally both that which we see and ourselves seeing it.

Before we can learn how to step outside the pattern set into motion by some habitual negative reaction toward others, we need a better understanding of the underlying forces that create it. In other words, we must find a way to look at these same moments through a "new set of eyes."

Freedom, real freedom, does exist. But it is not a condition of events, nor is it found within another person's approval of us. Neither is real freedom ever a mere effect of circumstances, otherwise it is not freedom but merely a temporary pleasure we have mistaken for being the same as being free...

We're always trying, one way or the other, to grab and maintain something that will make us feel safe and whole forever. The pursuit of that wholeness, of that security, is through what we commonly call "powers." When we think of our security, we think of the powers that we must have to maintain it -- whether it's trying to please other people, trying to have, keep, and gain more possessions, or struggling to get some kind of control over a relationship or...

Every one of us who has ever been thrust into some seemingly overpowering circumstance is more than equally empowered to understand the following: What we receive in those life moments amounts to our individual life experience... and what we experience as our individual life has to do with that level of life's possibilities that we embrace and ultimately express...

If we want new answers to old self-defeating questions such as "Why me?" -- we're going to have to use our mind in a new way. If we want new answers, real answers, we need new questions. First, we must realize that our stressful experiences are not caused by people or events. They are caused by our reactions to them. I know this is different than most of us feel, and yet, we can see that we have changed the people and even the events in our...

Let me tell you a little story. An aspirant, someone who wanted to make the discoveries that you and I are interested in, went to the master that she was working with, and wanted to know why it was that her transformation machine -- which was designed to turn lead into gold -- wasn't working the way it was when she saw her master use it. She says to him, "Look. I know it's built the same way. It's got the same parts. What's wrong?...

So many people today are bitter, broken-hearted, or just plain angry because of what happened to them while growing up. The reasons for their resentment or regret are as countless as are the number of unconscious people who unknowingly create such pain in the lives of those they hurt. But nothing that happened yesterday -- as horrendous as it may have been -- has authority over the present moment and its new possibilities...

The Presence moment can be thought of as a kind of "meeting" place of myriad invisible worlds. It is a timeless space of open-ended possibilities in which your created nature converges and interacts with all that constitutes your original Self. Call this all-encompassing Spirit what you will, but it is... and forever will be a compassionate intelligence whose living light creates, animates...

Do you find yourself going through your day, running around like some mad human being, trying to juggle the pieces of your life to make them fit into some picture you've imagined? Have you had enough of suffering uselessly over your best attempts to change those daily experiences? Then here's what you need to consider...