There can be little as extraordinary as our discovery that we have been “lost” in a world of illusion, wandering and wallowing through the kingdom of thought where — in the vain attempt to prove we know what it means to “rule” over our life and ourselves — we crown ourselves daily with a ring of thorns.

But even more extraordinary… is that within this very awakening (to our own unseen state of self-induced sorrow), we realize that our former state is the same in everyone we meet; that they have no knowledge of the price they pay for this unkind self-coronation, and may never… unless something intervenes in their life, which brings me to this last point:

We can no more awaken ourselves (to ourselves) than can a rose bloom without sunlight; so the very fact of being able to see ourselves as we are (and have been) proves, undeniably, the existence of another order of intelligence, and a compassionate one at that.

The very light by which we now see the darkness we have been standing in, without knowing it, reveals that not only are we not alone in our wish to be free, but that the source of this illumination — and its perfect freedom — lives within us, and always has.

Now we know where to search; now begins the work.