Special Lessons

The anticipation of something desirable is always sweet in conception, which would be great if it weren't for a certain fact about the nature of longing itself: it appears within us, at first, by itself, bringing with it the promise of just what we need to make everything right. But appearances are not always what they seem; for standing directly behind it, as it were...

Knowledge, regardless of its sophisticated nature, is a tool. It arises from and belongs to what has passed. As such it embodies, defines, and relates us to life through what we already know is true about the world around us. By definition, this kind of understanding is limited.

There are possibilities in every given moment that exist solely for us to become new -- to change what we've been -- but we must learn to open ourselves. What does it mean to open myself? It means that -- in this moment -- I must understand that when I'm looking at your face, at what you do or don't do, at the weather, even when I'm looking in the mirror at myself...

Regardless of the assertion of any fearful state that seeks to convince you otherwise (using its painful presence within you as "proof" that the prison you're locked within will stand until the end of time), apply this one great truth: That fear must break down if it doesn't succeed in breaking down your willingness to test its reality. How do you conduct such a test?...

Have you noticed yet that wherever you go, the thing that you don't want the most seems to know where you are? Seriously. It doesn't just know where you are. The Divine has created the conditions under which a reaction will be stirred and brought into your consciousness so that you can finally realize that running from it doesn't change the reality of it. Only bringing it into the light...

We must learn what it means to become unfixed from negative states, and we will when we realize that the sense of self we derive from them is worthless. It's not based on anything real, and it has no permanence because with time all states pass. We value negative states because of the strong sense of self we get from them. This may be very difficult for us to see, but a strong light...

Of what use is our endless struggle to adapt and even achieve some of the more common culturally-valued prizes, knowing (as all of us do) that nothing we can ever possess has the power to stave off our own inevitable passing? The following quotation that I just love is from Vernon Howard, a great twentieth century mystic, that really not only helps to put this idea that we're...

Have you ever noticed that the more negative you get, the more difficult everything about your life becomes, including being able to do the simplest things? Even your intention to work spiritually in some way -- to develop and transcend yourself -- now sits in the hands of a very negative self, a dense level of self that sees nothing but darkness ahead of it.

Unwanted life lessons repeat themselves again and again. Why? Because we keep talking to ourselves about them. Whether they happened two minutes -- or even 25 years ago -- we talk to ourselves about things we regret or feel guilty over. In fact, the mind almost never stops talking. Something triggers a thought that is the left over, undigested energy of an event that was meant...

Self-observation is the key to a higher order of awareness; it is how we learn to become inwardly vigilant to our own thoughts and feelings, even as they pass through us. When we can observe ourselves in this new way, our higher nature naturally prevails over any troubling thoughts or feelings that want to drag us down into their lower world...

We have an innate need to rise above ourselves, to open ourselves to higher influences... for one thing, because we understand that without higher influences, we're left to our own flu-like influences from which we don't get well, and that we are sick from following our own prescriptions! Our present condition is imagining what we need to do in order to get above ourselves...

Every relationship that we have in our life -- our contact with each person, place, and event -- serves a very special, if yet to be realized, purpose: it is a mirror that reveals things to us about ourselves that can be realized in no other way. I think this is one of the reasons that so many of us love to be out and about in that great showroom of life called Mother Nature.