Special Lessons

Any time we find ourselves sinking into some dark mood, getting more and more disturbed over some past unwanted moment, the first thing we need to see is the truth of the following: The reason we can't drop what's dragging us down is because we're connected -- in that same moment -- to a lower level of consciousness that likes to show us and give us good reasons to feel bad...

We can never hope to be free as long as any part of us struggles with, or suffers over what others are doing, have done, or won't do with their lives. Besides, if we could remain aware of the often-compromised state of our own character, that is, how we still do those things to others that we don't want to do, this awakened conscience would stir in us a new need. Rather than worrying about whether so-and-so gets his comeuppance for being the...

There is a story greater than ours, unfolding in each present moment, inviting us to embrace it as our own. Here is a true story to illustrate this idea. Under Paris is one of the largest catacombs in the world -- a hundred square miles of underground passages. Lamps for guided tours light up a small portion, while most of the rest remains in the dark. Two men got it into their heads that they wanted to go into the unexplored region of the catacombs...

At some point in our lives we have all dealt with uncomfortable moments where an unexpected or unwanted change in one near to us brings up some unpleasant reaction in us. Of course we are usually very quick to find fault with this person, but here is the real, invisible story. The reason we fall under the rule of these reaction-driven dark states, and then find ourselves trying to dictate the life direction of the "offending" person, is that something...

Love exists. She is never not present although her life-giving presence is rarely perceived, much in the same way as we breathe in air moment to moment barely noticing the gift of life it sustains. Nothing exists without Love. She is the secret Heart of all. These are not just words. They are an introduction to an Invitation created when Time began. To what are we invited? To know that we are already a measure of Love's Timeless Life...

What if you actually understood there is no death? Think for a moment what your life would be like. And I'm not just talking about the incessant human fear of their mortality. I'm talking about those moments in which it feels like you're dying because something has happened to you that you don't like, and how you struggle to keep alive the very thing caught in that crisis -- that nature struggling, suffering instead of understanding that the moment has come...

Almost every day I receive a letter, an e-mail, or phone call from an aspirant who wants to know, essentially, the following: "What must I do to succeed spiritually?" Or, in a slight variation on that theme: "What's the right way to do what I must in order to awaken?"

Within each of us lives a tireless, latent longing to touch -- and be touched by -- life's invisible celestial forces. For instance, whenever we stand as a silent witness to the endless expanse of a dark night sky, we are inwardly moved by this outer display of timelessness spread out above us...

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?

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...