Ambition

Topics covered: We try to change exterior conditions in order to change our experience; There is nothing more practical than self-understanding. And there is nothing more empowering than self-knowledge; When we are afraid and anxious, who or what is it that is taking the action to change my experience? Fear and anxiety pretend to be guides; Letting go is about discovering the parts of us that promise power but ultimately make us powerless.

Topics covered: We have been conditioned to believe that who we are is dependent upon conditions; Psychological fear is the belief that who we are can be threatened by exterior conditions; Fear needs to control the conditions that threaten the existence of that self-structure; You can't change conditions, but you can change your relationship to them. That's where fearlessness starts; Any fear that you feed is going to consume you in the end...

Topics covered: Everything you do to "courageously" get rid of fear is the continuation of the fear; Not knowing what to do about whatever state is boiling in you is the same as actually seeing the state as it is; The thing that you feared your whole life is the place you find freedom. The antidote is in the venom; Emptiness will always be filled naturally if you will stop trying to fill it through your own efforts.

Remastered Classic Talk: 5/24/17 - Constant inner dialogue -- that infernal internal conversation running through your head -- is the fear-driven manifestation of a lower nature that first imagines a threat of some kind, and that then can't stop talking to itself about how to protect itself from its own dark dream.

Remastered Classic Talk: 5/17/17 - 

Part 1: We are told that life is everlasting -- but see that nothing lasts! We are taught there is no death, and yet we see it everywhere around us! We dwell in the middle of an immense contradiction wherein one part of us feels the possibility of a life eternal, but that sees, and fears -- in the same moment -- only the inevitability of the opposite.

Part 2: The Great and Timeless Teaching -- that which can't be taught -- can only be learned through humility.

Student Talks: 04/24/2026 - Whatever it may be within us that fears death…is itself the thing that must die.

Remastered Classic Talk: 9/02/15 - We are convinced that if there's anything lacking in us, then the answer must be to acquire it, as has always been our go-to solution when suffering over some discontent. But as long as our hope for contentment is remanded over to a search for something outside of ourselves, we will never see the fact that this discontent is inseparable from our present level of self, let alone come to understand that the only solution for it rests therein... In the last place we would think to search for it.

Topic: The First Step to Seeing Your True Being (Remastered Classic Talk)(Classroom Talk 5/7/25)

Remastered Classic Talk: 05/04/16 - The Vine doesn't fear the passing of the branch; it was there before it. The Vine gives rise to the branch; it will be there long after the branch withers in winter winds, and falls away. The branch fears its own passing, knowing nothing of the Vine from out of which it has come... or that it will be born again come the light of spring. All is Vine for those who can see the branch for what it is.

Student Talks: 2/28/2025 - The vast majority of humanity views the idea of spiritual rebirth as some sort of prize to be claimed and declared: a new and exciting personal possession, like having won a tropical island in a high-stakes lottery. But true rebirth is nothing of the kind; (it is) a distinct awareness within oneself of a timeless and intelligent awareness -- a fearless and abiding patience, burgeoning with expectation -- that is "in the world (of passing time), but not of it."

Topics covered:  The divided consciousness asks a question about its pain, and then immediately answers its own question; When the mind asks a question, you think you have to answer it; It is possible by the grace of God to come to the end of every last question you have. The question creates the illusion of a self that is stuck.