In our inner work to awaken and realize ourselves, we must begin where we begin, and put away any other concerns about where that beginning is. It’s enough just to make a start, wherever that may be. What difference does it make at what point you enter into a great river? Sooner or later, all of its waters reach and pour into the sea.

Never let discouragement have the final word, and one day there will be nothing left to discuss. Besides, you can have just as many new beginnings as you’re willing to leave behind all of your ideas about yourself. Nothing in this world, or in any other, can stop you from discovering your original, free being. This has always been your destiny, as Walt Whitman confirms: “The central urge in every atom, to return to its divine source and origin.”

Following are 10 secret ways higher self-studies help you succeed in life:

1. Higher self-studies reveal that your nature is your fortune, so better luck begins with a change of self.

2. Higher self-studies hold many benefits for the sincere student, like the deep-sea diver who discovers a treasure chest lying buried beneath a bed of pearls.

3. Higher self-studies introduce your mind to a higher body of wisdom whose elevated nature lifts you, as wind does the wings of an eagle.

4. Higher self-studies prove that permitting your life direction to be determined by the way the world turns is like using the pointer of a wind-lashed weather vane for your compass and guide.

5. Higher self-studies prove that changing the way you see your life changes the life you see.

6. Higher self-studies pave the happy and relief-filled way to a new life that isn’t governed by ceaseless compromise and painful self-interest.

7. Higher self-studies reveal secret sources of conflict, as in discovering that the chief thief responsible for stealing your peace of mind is your own certainty that you already know the real nature of security.

8. Higher self-studies provide superior self-safety by helping you develop a new awareness that can see through highly reflective surfaces, such as well-polished personalities that conceal hidden motives.

9. Higher self-studies teach you the wisdom of letting go, which has nothing to do with giving up on your life — or in — to self-defeating desires.

10. Higher self-studies make it clear that looking for a sense of self permanence in the way others think about you is like trying to make a plaster cast of the wind.