Choice

Topics covered:  The last thing that human beings want to give up is their suffering; The root of every ongoing, painful psychological struggle is the attempt to avoid suffering; None of the chronic psychological pains that we experience in our lives exist without the corresponding things outside of ourselves that we blame them on.

Student Talks: 3/07/2025 - The inevitable sense of emptiness that eventually nips at the heels of most men and women is the sudden realization that in spite of having "banked" a billion self-stimulating sensations -- even when all have been added up -- they still amount to nothing.

Student Talks: 1/24/2025 - Awakening is the (graduated) process of negating all forms of identification; (it is) the realization that no matter how real the feel of any familiar sense of self -- for its pleasure, or pain -- nevertheless: no sensation does a “self” make, any more than a wave on the sea makes the sea from out of which it rises, and must return.

Topics covered: The mind seeks in time what can only be given in the present moment, which is a relationship with the Divine that is already being given to you; Tension is the gap between what you imagine you need and how long it takes to get there; You will never find peace in a time to come. It doesn't exist there. The idea of a "time to come" is the very disturbance in which you live because you believe in things that you don't understand...

Student Talks: 9/29/2023 - Key Lesson: True joy is uncalled for; it is like a breeze you didn't know you were waiting for; a silence that speaks of things eternal; (it is) to experience and realize the completion of something within you that you didn't even know was missing.

Topics covered: Real joy is connected to a new kind of willingness to participate in what we could call "Divine Being"; The consciousness that dreams about greatness does not know anything about true greatness; Everything that the mind thinks is greatness is a poor substitue for the timeless greatness that has already been prepared for you; The joy of being useful is about understanding your role...

Student Talks: 2/3/2023 - Key Lesson: The more we work to attend to the need of each new moment, the more the conflict of yesterday -- along with its closest friend, called the "fear of tomorrow" -- seems to be miraculously resolved, and then just quietly disappear!

Topics covered: The unconscious mind tries to regain balance whenenver it registers a disturbance that interferes with its agenda; The distractions we turn to in order to escape the feeling of emptiness are created by the consciousness that must fill itself in order to know itself; Humanity's imagined heaven is the invention of a consciousness that is in hell; If you are still anxious and afraid...

Topic: Stop Dark Thoughts & Feelings from Stealing Your Life (Classroom Talk 11/16/22)

Student Talks: 11/18/2022 - Key Lesson: The past does not give birth to the future, any more than we might think to look for the living in a graveyard.

Topics covered: The problem isn't the disturbance itself. The problem is that nobody understands the reason for it, which is why unnecessary suffering continues; The more that we listen to the temptation to follow the choices that appear to try to change what disturbs us, the more everything remains the same; It is the choices you make that lead to the very conditions that you feel trapped by...

Classroom Talk: 11/16/2022 - Here is the self-evident, but seldom -- if ever -- admitted reason why we must do the difficult inner work needed for real self-transformation: if we don't rise above our present level of consciousness, we gradually come to incarnate the very weakness we claim to despise within us. To see the truth of this provides us with a reason, the will and the courage...