Coming Alive: 4 Tools to Defeat Your Inner Enemy, Ignite Creative Expression & Unleash Your Soul's Potential

PRINCIPLE 1: THE TRUTH IS A FORCE, NOT A THOUGHT When you use the tools enough times, the Truth hits you the way a force does. That’s why we say, “I was struck by the truth.”

Truth reveals Part X—enabling us to see how it convinces us of our purity. Beauty inspires us to fight X, to strive for greater honesty. And Goodness transforms us—allowing us to leverage evil into virtue.

watch what happens when you do try to restrain your urges. Try this: • Put yourself in the state of craving you experienced in the last exercise. Feel the insatiable hunger driving you to get whatever it is you want. • Now imagine holding back—forbidding yourself from getting what you want. • Notice what your reaction is: how does it feel to be den

Children have this kind of enthusiasm because Part X hasn’t overtaken them yet. Without being aware of it, they’re suffused with the love of the Mother. As we grow into adulthood, our task is to focus on the outside world, learning how to feed, clothe, and house ourselves, as well as relate to other people. Part X takes advantage of this outward or

PRINCIPLE 2: THE TRUTH HURTS It’s painful to be seized by this otherworldly force. In fact, we tell our patients, “If it doesn’t hurt, you’re probably lying to yourself.”

HOW THIS DEADENS YOU: When you give in to despair, you destroy your ability to create the kind of future you want. Your answer to everything becomes “Why bother?”

Beauty is so important. By revealing an entire dimension of life that’s untouched by Part X, Beauty pierces through the miasma of impossibility like a ray of sunlight, injecting you with the sense that everything is possible. Beauty inspires you to live a life that says “I can” rather than “I can’t.”

You need extra energy to get life going again, but you have no idea where to get it from. Part X tells you not to even try, that it’s impossible to change your basic energy level. Once you believe that initial lie, a sense of impossibility spreads through your being, as if Part X whispered its own mantra, “You can’t do it.” But you can. You have ac

What makes the Mother such an invaluable resource is that she never loses faith in us; she sees the best even when we’re blind to it. With her infallible optimism, she has the power to lift us back up when we get knocked down. In the previous chapter, you learned that your body is limited—it needs an infusion of energy from something beyond.