Choice

What is it that makes us feel powerless when someone does something and it punishes us, or we hear some unwanted news? Let's examine it. Something happens that I don't like, and what am I looking at in that moment? I'm not looking at the thing that I don't like. What I'm "looking at" is the whole condition of myself that feels challenged, threatened by, overcome through whatever it is that it sees. But what does it see other than something that it resists?

Wishing to be free, without taking action toward our intention, is meaningless; we must employ the truths we uncover, or we will never realize the possibility of their true power, which is to help us walk away from what has been wrecking us. But with this new understanding in mind we must also realize that the truth that sets us free is not for hire; it does not so much "work" for us as...

Who is the most unwelcome guest that appears at your door? (And it is not your son-in-law!) Again... Who is the most unwelcome guest that ever came 'knock-knock-knocking' at your door? How many of you had some dark thought or feeling knock at your door and wake you up this very morning... unwanted guests such as depression, anxiety... "Hello, anybody home?" How about worry...

Student Talks: 10/17/2025 - There is no painful state of psychological resistance to any given moment that isn’t preceded by some form of unseen demand that we have brought with us into that moment. 

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.

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.

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!

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.

Student Talks: 11/4/2022 - Key Lesson: There is a proportionate and direct relationship between the degree of an inconsolable pain -- some form of disquiet that's pretty much our daily companion -- and misunderstanding the real purpose of this life we have been given.

Student Talks: 4/22/2022 - Key Lesson: There is a very strange feature as concerns most human beings: we would rather feel anxious thinking about unwanted moments over which we have no power, than to practice placing our attention in the fact of that moment... where no thought is needed to build a bridge between ourselves, and a timeless peace whose Presence all of us seek.

Student Talks: 8/14/2020 - Key Lesson: Part 1: We can imagine almost anything save this one unimaginable exception: the dark walls that seem to close in on us in the midst of some unwanted moment are, in fact, nothing more than (parts of) a dark dream born of a mind so asleep to itself... it can't see it has unconsciously...