Spiritual growth Archives

Latest YouTube Offering: “Show Me the Ashes, I’ll Show You the Phoenix”

Featured, Spiritual growth / By Sara / 1 minute of reading

Dear Friends, We are constantly trying to get what we want out of life, in myriad ways. We are always hoping to achieve self-fulfillment through personal striving. And then, when each attempt fails, we dust ourselves off and try again, a little differently each time. But there’s something fundamentally wrong with the entire psychology behind our efforting, and all of it is doomed to fail. In this powerful and illuminating talk, David explains how to …

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We Shouldn’t Need to Bend Ourselves Out of Shape to be “Normal”

Featured, Heart-directed Living, Spiritual growth / By Sara / 3 minutes of reading

Dr. C, my family’s physician, was in a class by himself. He and I always spent the first fifteen or twenty minutes of my appointments just sitting and chatting, before he ever examined me. He was interested in health, not sickness, and that’s what he promoted. And that’s how he lived: He was a dedicated runner and swimmer and rode his bike to work every day. I’ll never forget him saying, “If I was in …

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Watch on YouTube: “Freedom Is from the Past, in the Heart”

Featured, Heart-directed Living, Spiritual growth / By Sara / 1 minute of reading

Dear Friends, When people go into therapy or personal reflection, looking for the cause and hopefully the solution to their personal problems, they usually find a cause outside themselves. Something from their past—some hurtful situation, some traumatic event—that now limits them. The trouble is, the past is over. Nothing about it can be changed. So whatever caused their problems is still causing their problems. In this talk, David Truman describes this perennial dilemma and how …

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Pleasure: A Hidden Test of Love

Love, Spiritual growth / By Sara / 5 minutes of reading

It’s obvious to everyone that difficulty puts love to the test. But who suspects that pleasure also tests our love? Almost no one. And that’s why we’re blindsided when we’re tested by pleasure, and we so often flunk the felicity test. We’re not used to thinking of pleasure as a test of love. Isn’t love a wonderful source of pleasure, and a great pleasure in itself? Absolutely! There’s nothing wrong with pleasure, and it’s completely …

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Possessiveness: Selfishness Disguised as Commitment

Love, Spiritual growth / By Sara / 8 minutes of reading

I still feel a twinge when I think of my high school best friend, Sharon (not her real name). After graduation life pulled us in different directions, and we lost track of each other. But we managed to find each other several years later, and we had a visit I’ll never forget. Sharon told me about her successful professional life and her marriage, which she claimed was a happy one. But later in the conversation …

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Wooden blocks that spell selfish or selfless depending in what position the last block is

Martyrdom: Selfishness Disguised as Service

Love, Spiritual growth / By Sara / 7 minutes of reading

We human beings are kind, generous, and serviceful by nature. It’s in our DNA to give freely to those we love, to those in need, and ultimately, to everyone in our lives. When done in the right spirit, it’s our pleasure to give. And the pleasure is mutual. But some people are literally “generous to a fault.” They carry giving too far. They exhaust themselves; they go overboard on service, giving beyond what they can …

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Now on YouTube: “Looking through the Anals of Human History”

Choice, Spiritual growth / By Sara / 1 minute of reading

Dear Friends, Everyone who reviews human history sees a saga of suffering, difficulty, and trouble—which seems to repeat itself, and never gets far from the same old SHIT. Are we stuck with such a terrible destiny? David Truman says NO! In this talk, he identifies the cause of all the suffering and the way to avoid repeating the same destiny. It’s the way exemplified by the bright lights of human history—people like Jesus, Gandhi, and …

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Manipulation: Selfishness Disguised as Sincerity

Love, Spiritual growth / By Sara / 4 minutes of reading

It’s a classic movie plot: A couple falls in love, but there’s a dark cloud on the horizon…. The courtship begins with a misrepresentation or misunderstanding, which is kept up through most of the movie. But somewhere near the end, the relationship gets serious enough that the deception can no longer be maintained. The pretender admits the truth, hoping that it won’t end the relationship. It very nearly does. In real life, when a pattern …

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New YouTube Video: “Revising the Blueprint for Love”

Love, Spiritual growth / By Sara / 1 minute of reading

Dear Friends, The usual approach to love and relationship is to find a special someone to love, and focus our love and attention on them primarily. Others are not “supposed” to matter as much. But we’ve all experienced what a lie that is. In “Revising the Blueprint for Love,” a talk recorded in 1983, David Truman says: “In theory, it should not matter that people blow hot and cold. In theory, one moment when your …

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Just Added to YouTube: “Apology Is Golden”