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"Bringing one’s personal life into alignment with the natural laws and universal principles is the great challenge for today’s seekers. Information overload, a lack of time, and an inability to connect with essential spiritual teachings conspire to make the journey to consciousness a daunting one. In Awakening: A Daily Guide to Conscious Living, preeminent teacher Shakti Gawain offers gentle daily guidance for that journey."

Fundamental Beliefs

Things that are learned early in life are the hardest to change or unlearn. Early conceptions of the world, even if lost to consciousness, remain a part of our memory and may influence our behaviors in some very interesting ways.

Children attempt to explain and make sense of their world in terms of their experience. By the very nature of their limited number of years, their experience is not very wide or deep.

Their interpretations of the world, why things happen, is extremely limited and often very inaccurate. Nevertheless, these early interpretations are often the groundwork upon which later, more accurate and sophisticated explanations are based.

People seem to have a need to repeat unrewarding situations in the present that are remarkably similar to unhappy situations and relationships that occurred in their childhood.

While one part of the personality seems to be actively engaged in trying to redo the past in a more favorable or successful manner, another part seems determined to make sure that the present turns out exactly the same as the past. This is certainly a more difficult motive to understand since it seems designed to continue a painful, frustrating, even self-defeating situation.

Who we are, our sense of self is a product of all the experiences that have impinged upon us. Every time we say "I am good at writing," or "I can't play tennis," or "I am not very good at arithmetic," or "Athletics are really my great strength" we are making a statement about some aspect or ourself, our identity. Over the years, we add to and modify parts of that identity.

The process goes on without our having to give it much thought. Often, discovering who we are becomes a complicated process of reviewing influences that have had an impact without our realizing it. Sometimes, the review process--the getting to know ourselves--holds some very real surprises as well as confrontation with some real contradictions that exist within our personality.