Special Lessons

If there's one thing that should be more than evident to everyone on the planet, it's that the level of pain in it is increasing. We'll prove this in a number of different ways before we're done with our talk, but we always want to move away from what's planetary and get personal right away. So let me ask you a question, and I'll state it in simple terms. How many of you suspect you're imbalanced? Human beings are imbalanced.

It's hard to believe that we have a nature that would rather destroy someone else -- punish them, resent them -- than see itself as it is. Most of us still don't believe it, but when things don't happen the way we want them to, what becomes of us? What do we express? You know the answer, don't you?

It is not in our power to change anyone else. On the other hand, our experience always brings us to this moment of truth where we have the possibility of changing what happens to us. And so it follows that the person to whom and in whom the Truth begins to become a living force, cannot have a bad day or a bad relationship.

Once we realize that whatever we will bring into our awareness has always been an aspect of our own consciousness, only not yet awakened to, we also understand this liberating truth: nothing exists outside of us. All destinations are already within us, including the Love we are searching for and the unconditional freedom that It alone has the power to grant.

Have you ever gone through a crisis of some kind, and after 20 or 30 years of the same lesson coming back, you realize you have been walking along the same dark road? I know that it gets tough sometimes, but those of us who have any love whatsoever for what is true, good, and Divine should be encouraged. Because you have no idea what's on our side, how much is trying to be given to us at all times.

It wasn't that long ago that men and women understood that the purpose of prayer wasn't to bring things into their lives to make their lives better. It was so that through prayer, they could bring themselves into a completely different order of their own consciousness.

Do you want to know what tears the heart apart? What dries up the mind and kills the soul? It is the lies that remain inside of human beings because we have been duped into protecting something that secretly punishes us. And we mistake the idea of being protected for the same as being whole and complete when, of course, we can't be protected without a fear being protected by that lying nature.

There is a Love that transcends every experience that a human being can have of the sensation or the emotion that we call "love." It isn't the love we have for our family. It isn't the love we have for nature. It isn't even the love that we feel when we're thinking about a truth and we feel uplifted by it. It is a Love of a completely different order.

One day an announcement was posted. It said there would be an open series of marathons and foot races comprised of various distances and degrees of difficulty. All who wished to test themselves against course, clock, and each other, were invited to compete for fabulous gifts and prizes, as well as for national recognition for being the best in their class.

As we learn how to take the higher ground inwardly and begin winning that life for which we are created, we are gradually empowered to prevail over any event and challenge that life presents. Often, to our own amazement, we develop a new kind of eagerness to meet old weaknesses because within us is growing a cosmic confidence that cannot be defeated. Our inner victory rewards us with higher resources that help us every moment of the day.

We have within us, each and every one of us, a certain kind of higher vantage point -- a very special part of us -- that when we are present to it, we enjoy its peace, regardless of what is going on around us or within us. This yet to be realized state of ourselves can be called conscious self-awareness. Through its power, instead of being pulled down into painful identification with each and every passing shadow of life...

Our true nature -- the free mind -- is a perfect warning system for detecting and, with our cooperation, rejecting any and all psychic intruders. Its uncommon intelligence never complies with the presence, or demands, of any fearful negative state.