Our True Self longs to be free and unencumbered by self-limiting, self-defeating, compulsive thoughts and feelings. The problem is, at our present undeveloped level, we believe that another person or event is causing our unhappy feelings. We want power over them in the hope that it will give us power over our punishing feelings. Can you see that this approach to self-command is doomed from its ill-conceived beginning?”

Looking for the power to be happy is not found in a person, place, possession, idea, or belief, but through the new understanding that your higher, permanent nature needs no power outside of itself in order to be in charge of an inner or outer attacker. Its strength is what I call the Silent Force. It alone can do for you what you have been unable to do for yourself.

The Silent Force is the understanding that you need not answer to any disturbance within you. Any form of response to a negative state, other than to silently observe it, is always a form of resistance to it. And what we resist persists. You have been taught by wrong example and false traditions that negative thoughts and feelings such as fear, anger, and hatred are something you are responsible for; that they belong to you. You are indeed responsible for them, but not to them. Inner aches and dark feelings are not yours. They never have been and they never will be, no matter how much these inner impostors try to convince you otherwise.

There is no power that can make light out of darkness. Remember this lesson the next time you feel compelled to help yourself out of a dark inner thought or feeling. Remember the Silent Force. Go silent! This silence and inner light will do for you what you have not been able to do for yourself.