We grabbed a wrong solution like it was scissors, hoping to cut out what hurt. And we ran. To be in harmony, we have to walk straight in three areas: physically, mentally and emotionally. All three sides of our nature must work together, like two people running a three-legged race, for a human personality to find unity through growth. Having any one area underdeveloped will have a crippling effect; it will take the entire personality down. Our feelings are often left in the dust… In every...

Our defenses block access to our emotions, choking off our ability to get to our feeling. We need to lower our weapons. Our defenses work by blocking access to our emotions, so they choke off our ability to get to our feelings. We’re going to need to lower our weapons…Every tear not shed is a block. Every protest not spoken sits like a lump in our throat, causing us to lash out inappropriately. These emotions feel like bottomless pits… Feelings, which are moving energy currents, will change...

The mask self is like the word we use to describe bad art: kitsch. One of the subtle bodies in every living person is the Higher Self, or divine spark. The higher one’s spiritual development, the faster these vibrations will be…Ever since the Fall of the Angels, our Higher Self has gradually wrapped itself in various invisible layers of more dense matter that is somewhere in between the density of the physical body and the Higher Self. Say ‘hello’ to the Lower Self… The Lower Self, which...

We think the frictions in our lives have nothing to do with us. Our spiritual work, which comes in answer to our prayers, arrives in the form of a conflict or a friction which then activates some combination of the three personality types in us. Something happens that makes us feel we’re being treated unjustly, so we will have a chance to recognize our inner errors and purify our souls…The moment we say a prayer asking for help and strength, all hell is going to break loose. That’s when we...

Hanging on for dear life won’t bring us to the doorstep of the real self. We simply cannot find ourselves that way. An important difference between our superficial intellect and our real self is that we can direct, manipulate and govern the intellect using our will; we can’t do this with the real self. Of the two, the real self is the more intelligent one. We are conditioned to put a laser-like focus on the use of our thinking ability and willpower. So we believe we can reach...

The idealized self wants to be perfect right now. The real self knows this isn’t possible, and isn’t bothered by this one little bit. There’s a direct correlation between being unhappy and not believing in ourselves; our self-confidence takes a hit that is proportional to how badly we feel. Our idealized self-image is supposed to avoid all that by supplying the missing self-confidence. This, we think, by way of our unconscious reasoning, will lead us straight down the road to pleasure...

It never occurs to us that our real problem is the solution we have chosen. There are three major divine attributes—love, power and serenity—that in the healthy person work as a team. They maintain flexibility amongst themselves so one never drowns another out…But when they are in distortion, they step all over each other. Then love, power and serenity get distorted into their evil twins: submission, aggression and withdrawal… In our efforts to master our difficulties, largely created in...

Our inner child can’t let go of the past; it can’t accept and can’t forgive. So it sets up similar conditions, thinking this time it can win. Children have more than just a desire to be loved; they want to be loved exclusively, without any limits. In other words, every child’s desire for love is unrealistic…Since they seldom receive an adequate amount of warmth and mature love, children remain hungry for it throughout their whole life…Essentially everyone—even the most diligent spiritual...

We draw people and events to us like bees to honey on account of our images. From practically the time we were born, we have been creating our own impressions about this thing we call life. The only problem is, most of the time our conclusions are wrong…They are based on a certain limited child logic, but they are nonetheless in error. As we grow up, these wrong conclusions and the attitudes they spawn sink out of our awareness where they set in and start molding how our life will look…The...

Not only have we done nothing to mitigate the original pain, we’ve invited more of it. Nice work, everyone. So let’s talk about pain, and more importantly how to dissolve pain caused by old patterns…The climate we grew up in affected us—it was like perpetually receiving a minor shock…We suffered and believed our suffering was unchangable, which conditioned us to create defenses—highly destructive defenses…We repressed the original frustration and pain we couldn’t deal with. And we put it...

Whenever we are negatively involved with someone, we can be sure our split is a factor in the fireworks. We’re here because planet Earth is a perfect match for the negativity remaining in us; it offers conditions compatible with our inner landscape, our inner splits. We’re confused about reality and we have a headful of crazy concepts…Where this prevails there’s always conflict. This is due to split concepts that divide the psyche and don’t arise from the truth …So Earth is nothing more and...

If we had no shortcomings, we would have no fear. And our fear and insecurities are what make us so miserable. They spoil everything. If we apply these teachings to our lives, they will work for us in finding out the truth. There is nothing we must believe…If we want to become capable of experiencing genuine happiness, we must learn how to course-correct back into alignment with spiritual laws… None of this can happen by merely concentrating on our outer problems. We must look deeper and...

Our pride doesn’t matter half as much as our overly self-important little ego would have us believe. There is one fundamental quality that is the core element of who we are…This means that each one of us have kept a kernel of perfection—our original nature—basically intact in our core essence, although it’s now covered by the Lower Self and layer upon layer of imperfections. So we have two missions. One is to sense what our basic light is, and the other is to realize how these three...

The realization that cause and effect is on us, not an angry or indulgent God, is one of life’s main breaking points. As children, we learned that the highest authority—even higher than Mom & Dad—is God. So it’s not a surprise that we bundle up all our painful subjective experiences with the Ones-Who-Say-No, and dump them on God. Presto change-o—a God image has been created… As kids, authority figures were forever popping up everywhere. And when they stopped us from doing whatever it...

Fate is nothing other than the events that occur due to the governing forces of our unconscious. It’s the tiger and we’re the tail. We have both a conscious mind, the stuff we know, and an unconscious mind, the stuff we don’t know we know. The unconscious is by far the stronger of the two…The unconscious should be credited with far more than it typically is…It’s what controls our fate…Fate is nothing other than the events that occur due to the governing forces of our unconscious. It’s the...

We must see that negativity is only a temporary reality. It will eventually grind us to a halt as it takes us to our knees. Self-perpetuating cycles of pain are what result from the conflict created when two creative forces go in opposing directions inside us…Naturally, everyone’s favorite direction is toward the light…But in reality, this is a world in which there are forces that oppose the light… Take, for instance, the physical level. The entire physical being is striving for health and...

With our negative intention, we will punish life for what it’s done to us. Crazy, right? As we slowly but surely make progress on our path, we become more alive. And we’re more honest in our feelings and ability to relate. We “sacrifice” old reactive patterns and discover that we have not given up anything good, and we have gained plenty. It’s hard to remain skeptical. Yet at some point in our journey, we are going to run into a wall. It’s made of our previously concealed but now...

More whole is more happy. Our goal, then, is to unity our whole selves. More whole is more happy. Our goal, then, is to use meditation to unify our whole selves, folding in the split off aspects of the Lower Self that remain in separation. Consider the truth that whatever is inside, no matter how painful it might be, cannot be avoided, but rather must be expressed and released. And that, friends, is what meaningful meditation is all about. Our beings are steeped in a potent and highly...

Utopia means we get everything we want, how we want it and when we want it. We want to have total freedom—with no responsibility. But alas, it is impossible. The stronger and deeper our convictions, the more substantial are the forms that exist in our soul. There’s one soul form worth talking about specifically, because it exists in each and every one of us to some degree. This form is shaped like an abyss and it’s made completely out of illusion. The size of this abyss varies for...