Faith is the complete reliance on the power and goodness of Spirit and the firm belief that you are always connected to this goodness. Always affirm your faith and not your doubt. When you affirm that things might not work out, that your troubles continue to mount, that your problems are insoluble, that God has not been listening, or that you are powerless in the face of so many struggles, you are affirming doubt rather than faith. The ability to know faith and affirm it allows it to manifest in your life.

In John 14:27, Jesus said, “My peace I give to you.” This is an affirmation of faith. He certainly wasn’t suggesting that peace is very difficult to have and you must struggle for it. Jesus brought peace to everyone by affirming it. Likewise, in his healing work, he didn’t imply that we haven’t been having a great deal of success lately with leprosy, but if you listen to me you have a thirty percent chance of surviving over the next five years. Instead, he declared, “You are well,” affirming faith at the highest spiritual level, and healing took place.

You too must learn to affirm your faith in the face of doubt with thoughts that things will work out, things will improve. Think, write, and say affirmations like these:

I intend to create prosperity.

I’ll do what is necessary to eradicate this problem.

I know I am not alone.

I have faith that all is for good.

I give no energy to the negative because I know all is in divine order.

I will consult with God and know that I will be guided to do what is needed.

These are all affirmations of faith, which, when practiced, will permit you to say “no” to doubt and “yes” to life.

Cure separates body from soul: healing embraces the whole.

Cure isolates: healing incorporates.

Cure costs; healing enhances.

Cure combats illness; healing fosters wellness (cure fixes; healing corrects).

Cure fosters function; healing fosters purpose.

Cure alters what is; healing offers what might be (cure controls; healing frees).

Cure is an act; healing is a process (cure is a closed system; healing is an open system).

Cure acts upon another; healing shares with a sister, a brother.

Cure manages; healing touches.

Cure seeks to conquer pain; healing seeks to transcend pain.

Cure ignores grief; healing assumes grief.

Cure encounters mystery as a challenge for understanding; healing encounters mystery as a channel for meaning.

Cure often issues from fear; healing issues from faith.

Cure rejects death and views it as a defeat; healing includes death among the blessed outcomes of care.

Feelings such as shame, guilt, doubt, envy, anger, and resentment arise whenever we have prevented ourselves from speaking our deepest truths, or withheld a depth of sincerity from being shared with others. With nothing to withhold or hide, the truth is spoken freely – at no one’s expense. The truth contains no form of blame or judgment. Instead, it celebrates how intimately you know yourself by how open and available you’re willing to be. Knowing this, life’s deepest wisdom always remains the same: you’ll feel better when you’re totally honest.

This is why honesty is also the ultimate healing modality. Honesty is the absence of avoidance, no matter what situation appears. Inevitably, life transforms when the value of honesty is no longer dominated by an attachment to convenience or the threat of rejection.

When honesty is regarded as your highest value and acted upon with kindness and compassion in every personal encounter, you invite the precision of life’s inherent perfection into all areas of life. In doing so, every relationship and circumstance transforms at the rate in which true sincerity of heart leads the way. This reveals life’s natural way of being, which cannot be known on the deepest level until you’re being completely honest.

Everyone knows the experience of “performance anxiety” whether you are a prima ballerina or a job candidate or a student taking a qualifying exam. Life is filled with what we think of as performance challenges.  The key word here is think because it’s really our thinking about these experiences that scares us—not the opportunity to show what we can do.

A way out of the “I’m scared” thought pattern is offered in A Course in Miracles. I have a special love for this weighty tome that tells us there are only two emotions we can experience: love and fear. Anything that is love cannot be fear, and anything that is fear cannot be love. If we can find our way to stay in a space of love, then fear is an impossibility.

Franklin D. Roosevelt’s famous refrain from his first inaugural address, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” was crafted from Thoreau’s observation that “nothing is so much to be feared as fear.” These Tao men had it right—there really is nothing to be afraid of. We have no need to fear and we can accomplish anything for the simple reason that we are never alone. The presence of our all-loving Source banishes fear.

When you face a “performance” that might provoke the “I’m scared” response, choose love and approach your opportunity as a chance to dance with God. It’s more fun than Dancing with the Stars! Bring your highest Self to the occasion, your loving, serving, giving, joyful self, and be prepared to show the world what your God-aligned Self has to offer.

How we see God is a direct reflection of how we see ourselves. If God brings to mind mostly fear and blame, it means there is too much fear and blame welled inside us. If we see God as full of love and compassion, so are we.

Rule 2

The path to the Truth is a labour of the heart, not of the head. Make your heart your primary guide! Not your mind. Meet, challenge and ultimately prevail over your nafs with your heart. Knowing your ego will lead you to the knowledge of God.

Rule 3

You can study God through everything and everyone in the universe, because God is not confined in a mosque, synagogue or church. But if you are still in need of knowing where exactly His abode is, there is only one place to look for him: in the heart of a true lover.

Rule 4

Intellect and love are made of different materials. Intellect ties people in knots and risks nothing, but love dissolves all tangles and risks everything. Intellect is always cautious and advices, ‘Beware too much ecstasy’, whereas love says, ‘Oh, never mind! Take the plunge!’ Intellect does not easily break down, whereas love can effortlessly reduce itself to rubble. But treasures are hidden among ruins. A broken heart hides treasures.

Rule 5

Most of problems of the world stem from linguistic mistakes and simple misunderstanding. Don’t ever take words at face value. When you step into the zone of love, language, as we know it becomes obsolete. That which cannot be put into words can only be grasped through silence

Rule 6

Loneliness and solitude are two different things. When you are lonely, it is easy to delude yourself into believing that you are on the right path. Solitude is better for us, as it means being alone without feeling lonely. But eventually it is the best to find a person who will be your mirror. Remember only in another person’s heart can you truly see yourself and the presence of God within you

Rule 7

Whatever happens in your life, no matter how troubling things might seem, do not enter the neighbourhood of despair. Even when all doors remain closed, God will open up a new path only for you. Be thankful! It is easy to be thankful when all is well. A Sufi is thankful not only for what he has been given but also for all that he has been denied.

Rule 8

Patience does not mean to passively endure. It means to look at the end of a process. What does patience mean? It means to look at the thorn and see the rose, to look at the night and see the dawn. Impatience means to be shortsighted as to not be able to see the outcome. The lovers of God never run out of patience, for they know that time is needed for the crescent moon to become full.

Rule 9

East, west, south, or north makes little difference. No matter what your destination, just be sure to make every journey a journey within. If you travel within, you’ll travel the whole wide world and beyond.

Rule 10

The midwife knows that when there is no pain, the way for the baby cannot be opened and the mother cannot give birth. Likewise, for a new self to be born, hardship is necessary. Just as clay needs to go through intense heat to become strong, Love can only be perfected in pain.

One August when I visited a dingo farm in Brisbane, Australia, I was told that the wild dogs were shedding their coats for the upcoming Spring. Spring after August? I thought, before remembering that the seasons follow opposite patterns in the Southern Hemisphere. Wondering if this would be confusing to God, I asked the zoo curator what would happen if a dingo was shipped on an airplane to New York in August—would its coat go from thinning to thickening, since winter would now be following summer?

“Happens all the time,” the curator said. “We fly them up there, and when they arrive, their coats start to thicken up.” Amazing, isn’t it? Now, if God remembers to adjust the coat on a dingo flying on a 747 from Australia to New York, surely He doesn’t forget us!

All of our life experiences—the struggles, the falls, the victories, the lessons, the emerging talents, all of it—is orchestrated by our Source. Be mindful of this fact: Whatever we decided upon with our Creator in advance of our manifestation into form is playing out right now. We must strive to always consciously remember that God hasn’t forgotten us—even though our egos may have edged God out—because He can’t forget us. Our infinite self is only here for a few moments in eternity. But even though we’re on loan for this temporary human experience, we’re never ever forgotten by God, the Source that provides us and everything else that lives and breathes with the energy, to sustain life. So we need to continually trust that the organizing intelligence of our Source, which is always operating in the Universe, is ever-mindful, and provides us with every blessing in abundance.

In preparation for taping a special for PBS based on my new book, I had to buy shoes. Of course, I argued a good case for going barefoot or wearing my customary sandals, but I was finally persuaded by the good people in charge of the show that I really needed the generally accepted footwear this time. While complaining that my feet, like my soul, prefer freedom, off I went to the nearest shoe store in downtown San Diego. I should have known that the Universe had something in mind.

On the way back to my hotel, I saw a ragged and bedraggled man stumbling across the street. Clearly, he needed help reaching the other side safely so I went out and steered him out of traffic. He told me he was homeless and hungry. Luckily, there was a diner close by. The staff of this place recognized my new friend, Ken, and told me they had had “trouble” with him in the past. I asked our server to consider that the same God who was present in her was also present in Ken, and all of us. Ken got the meal of his choice and we talked. As Mother Teresa said: “Each day I see Jesus Christ in all his distressing disguises.” The Divine is present in everyone. Talking to Ken, I hoped he would come to see himself as God sees him. When he smiled, Ken looked a lot like you and me.

I wouldn’t have had a chance to meet Ken, if I hadn’t needed those shoes. My feet do love freedom, but even more they love walking toward the opportunities our Divine Source sends us to love one another. As the spiritual says, “All God’s children got shoes.” We’ll all get shoes someday…and our souls will soar to freedom.

Whether you are waiting to return a serve on the tennis court or listening for your name to be called for a job interview, your instinct is to stay loose. Be ready, be flexible, be poised to respond when the time is right. Staying loose is part of living in the present moment. Your readiness to move is part of your wisdom and gives you the power you need to live your best life. In the 76th verse of the Tao Te Ching, Lao-tzu describes the flexibility that living things possess: “All things, including the grass and trees, are soft and pliable in life.” He contrasts that living pliability with the dry and brittle quality of death. Choosing to remain flexible is choosing life: “A tree that cannot bend will crack in the wind.”

You may have been taught that strength is measured by how “hard” you are in your thinking or how inflexible you are in your opinions and that weakness is associated with those who bend. But when confronted with any stressful situation, keep in mind that being stiff won’t get you very far, whereas being flexible will carry you through.

Change the way you think about strength. Aren’t the physically and mentally strong those who can bend and adapt to life—especially as we age? The more you think in rigid ways, refraining from considering other points of view, the more you’re liable to break. As Lao-tzu reminds us, “The hard and stiff will be broken,” while “the soft and supple will prevail.” Our minds and our bodies need flexibility to thrive. When we see ourselves as flexible and supple, we are able to bend in harmony with our Divine source. By listening, yielding, and being gentle, we all become disciples of life.