Those deep-seated, usually long-held, inflexible beliefs (hold-outs) about how the world or you or others should be are based on rigid judgments and archaic fears, not on values. Such ulterior inflexibility keeps you unfree and prevents your full selfemergence. It kills spontaneity, permeability, and finally compassion. “Non-ambiguity and

“your inner emptiness conceals just as great a fullness if you only allow it.”

Every relationship includes some hurt You may hold on to your indignation or to the pursuit of vengeance after being offended by someone. This maintains your grievance and prevents you from ever getting on with mutual commitment. Resentments that are worked through and dropped are the pathfinders to commitment. Resentments that are avenged, held

The grief that is unnoticed, unprocessed, and never called by name actually contributes to the breakdown of relationships. A sense of defeat, anger, and blame gnaws at the bonds of love. Then a depression shadows us and we never quite know why.

A psychologically and spiritually conscious person acts from a consistent—though always evolving—sense of values. To value is to esteem the worth of something, to declare that it has meaning for us.

No one creates your feelings. No one is to blame for your situation. You are the author of your condition. Whatever you have been doing is what you are really choosing, whether or not you consciously want it. The alternative is to see yourself as a victim of people or circumstances and real change becomes impossible. Taking responsibility always

You can be informed by others’ behavior rather than affected by it. You can observe the behavior of others without having to react to it or to be controlled by it. You operate from your own repertory of responses that uphold you no matter what others do, say, or mean to you.

Like one who lives in a valley and then crosses the mountains and sees the plain, he knows now from experience that the sign saying “Do not go beyond this point,” like the high mountains, does not signify a barrier.

The more spiritually conscious we become, the more we allow ourselves to recognize the subtle face of pain and fear that lurks behind the behaviors we judge. “It is only with the heart that one sees rightly” (The Little Prince).