Captivity

Topic: Detect and Drop Useless Thoughts that Are Dragging You Down (12/1/21 Classroom Talk)

Topics Covered: Blame is the same as avoidance of seeing yourself; Every creation is given, every day, what it needs to work; Discovering the truth of yourself is the same as discovering where energy has heretofore been wasted; ATUTS is "Addicted To Useless Thinking Syndrome"; The thing that you are addicted to has power over you only so far as you believe in its power to free you from pain.

Classroom Talk: 12/1/2021 - The more we think about what's wrong with life, with others, or about ourselves, the less we see this self-evident, but simple truth that once realized... helps set us free: the more we think about any disappointment, or the prison of some lingering pain we can't seem to escape, the more we are made a captive of those very same thoughts.

Topic: Bringing Silence to a Noisy Mind that Won't Stop Talking to Itself (10/20/21 Classroom Talk)

Topics Covered: Where does an inner dialog get its authority over us? It starts with our unconscious consent to identify with those thoughts; The root of self-talk begins with judgment; Self-talk is inseparable from the moment of conflict where something happens and it is interpreted as a threat to who I think I am and what I'm identified with; No self-talk starts without being triggered...

Classroom Talk: 10/20/2021 - Part 1: The sure way to guarantee that any suffering continues unabated is to keep talking to yourself about it! Part 2: The more we talk to ourselves about how we need to make some real change in our life, the less we see how consoling ourselves with ideas for a brighter tomorrow keeps us from realizing a simple truth...

Topic: Turn Painful Reactions into Self-Liberating Action (9/8/21 Classroom Talk)

Topics Covered: There is another, higher level of consciousness that is present for us in any moment that we are able to observe ourselves; We as human beings are created with the capacity to be aware of the divided level of consciousness that reacts with fight or flight; What we blame for our reaction cannot be separated from the consciousness that is having that reaction...

Classroom Talk: 9/8/2021 - We want to be free of painful reactions, but (unknowingly) resist the realization of our role in their annoying repetition; this awakening is a mandatory interim stage between being burdened by any form of unconscious resistance... and being liberated from its unseen prison.

Student Talks: 3/5/2021 - Key Lesson: The more we don't want to experience some unwanted moment, including the memory of one, the more real and protracted becomes the pain we feel, but not for the reasons we believe make it so. The pain in any negative reaction does not exist apart from the struggle of an unconscious...

Topics Covered: Presently our life is filled with trying to get what we want so that we don't have to feel any kind of discomfort; Every want that we have comes with a feeling that the moment should not be the way that it is; Of ourselves we do not possess the power to be at peace. We can imagine that we have that power, but peace is not something that comes as a result of something...

Topics Covered: You are the treasure you seek, but yet "you" are nothing like you think yourself to be; No painful negative reaction can be separated from an imagined sense of self. And there cannot be a negative reaction without resistance; SBS stands for "Shouldn't Be Syndrome." Something within us says that the moment shouldn't be the way it is as it interprets the moment...