The real adversary in our lives, that proverbial thorn in our side that leaves us aching and angry, and then sends us looking for someone to blame, is not what we have always believed. It is not something "out there." It's something "in here": an intimate enemy.

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...

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.

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...

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...

Topics Covered: We are not intended to live within and behind any kind of walls that limit our right to explore all of our celestial possibilities; We unconsciously identify with, and become captive of, self-constructed boundaries that are imagined by our consciousness; Our ideas, beliefs, and opinions are a kind of construction of an unconscious nature that prevents unfettered self-exploration.

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...

Topics Covered: Before we can change the world that we see, we're going to have to change the way we see the world; We usually see the world around us through the ideas that we have about it. The mind is mechanically habituated to see everything as being apart from itself; The mind is always fixed on something that it believes is separate from itself, but in reality nothing is fixed...

Topics Covered: There exists a freedom that can't be won through struggle; Everything that is whole is unspeakable, and cannot be fully comprehended by the intellect; What one thing in our life always shows up unannounced and ruins any moment in which it appears? The answer is: negative reactions; The pain of not wanting a moment IS the pain we experience in that moment...