Topics covered: When we try to avoid the consequences of our choices, we believe that the best thing to do is to make more choices that lead to more unwanted consequences; Conflict in consciousness is always a war between what it wants and what it does not want, along with its identification with those desires; You can't have a fear that isn't born out of a desire that you have identified with...
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Topics covered: Spiritual parables and symbols are intended to convey celestial principles that words cannot explain; One of the chief deceptions that we fall for is that something is missing from our lives, and that we will be able to acquire it in a time to come. As a result, we don't want anything that gets in the way of that ambition; We spend our lives trying to possess what we perceive to be good, and avoid anything that is judged to be bad.
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Topics covered: Spend less time trying to prove yourself, and more time BEING yourself. But "being yourself" is not what the world conditions all of us to believe; Connect the experiences that you don't want with the consciousness that creates those same experiences; Fear lies beneath the compulsion to be seen as someone important; What is important is to understand the importance of life. And what is most definitely NOT important is to...
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Classroom Talk: 11/22/2023 - The "importance" of any given moment is inseparable from whatever may be the momentary sense of "self" responsible for lending it that significance. If we are to have any hope of realizing what is actually important in this life -- which is to see through the illusion of a separate self -- then we must be honest enough to admit the following truth: What really makes one moment seem more important than any other...
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Topics covered: How long do you want to live a life in which you can be carried off at any time, beaten up, and then released whenever your captor is done with you?; The beginning of the end of useless suffering is in seeing that, at present, you do not really know why you suffer. There is not one solution that you think you know that is going to save you; If you ever want to stop being thrown into a prison whenever conditions seem to conspire against you...
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Classroom Talk: 11/15/2023 - No single substance -- whether physical, mental, or emotional -- creates an addiction, let alone the pain and conflict inherent in its corresponding dependency; rather dependency is the birthplace of all false solutions with which we first become identified, and then become addicted to... in the vain hope that it has the power to release us from a pain we have yet to understand, let alone resolve.
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Topics covered: To belong to the greater life that is eternal is the source of real joy in life; The real interior work is about helping a person remember what they have forgotten about what is true; The joy of being in the right place at the right time, doing the right thing, is that the moment is complete in itself. There is nothing residual; Psychologically and spiritually speaking, the only thing we ever...
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Classroom Talk: 9/20/2023 - To see that "taking thought" leads to naught... is the beginning of the end of all useless solutions.
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Topics covered: Without being able to see the big picture, we are lost. And negativity can only see its particular enemy of the moment; The divided consciousness derives a strong identity through resistance and its attending negativity; We have learned to live with unconscious suffering to a large extent, until the pain reaches a level at which it can no longer be denied; Negative identification is the unconscious...
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Topics covered: To paraphrase the well-known koan: If a tree falls in the woods, and there's no one there wishing it didn't, does it create fear or suffering?; The very struggle to escape the captivity of the consciousness that you are born into is why you remain a captive of that consciousness; The task is not to save yourself. The task is to realize a relationship with a part of you that does not need to be...
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Topics covered: There's only one thing in this life that sits at the center of all of our pain and problems in life, which is that we believe we can save ourselves; Until you understand the illusion that the "you" who suffers over your past is who you really are, nothing will change; We must enter into a new kind of "confrontation" with the part of us that blames everyone and everything else outside of it for the pain...
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Classroom Talk: 8/17/2022 - Unconscious identification with any pain from the past -- especially as it involves, or otherwise lends support to some negative perception of oneself -- is a slow-acting poison that, once ingested, soon darkens the soul and leads to its destruction.
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