Conditioning

Who you really are lives above the world of thoughts and feelings. But living from the mental how, we seek answers for painful questions. Living in the spiritual Now, we understand that there is no intelligence in torment, so we simply drop those questions. The everyday mental life, which naturally includes asking how, has its practical place in the world of auto mechanics...

Negative states don't want to leave. They don't want to lead you to the end of a relationship with them. They want you to follow them so that they remain your guide, and essentially your god. That's what negative states want. So every time you're angry or frightened or worried and those thoughts and feelings are talking to you and you're listening to them and doing as they instruct...

If we were to take the whole human race and try to see its nature as being one creature, what kind of animal comes to mind for you? For me, the answer is evident: humankind most resembles an ostrich. When a disturbance comes along this creature sticks its head in the sand so as not to see what's taking place. This is not unlike closing our eyes in the hope that an approaching...

We each have, and operate from, a false nature that is a jumble of our memories, conditioning, and temperamental qualities. It is this unsuspected false nature that meets the world each day, responding to and interpreting each and every one of life's fluctuations. It is very important for us to begin to understand that of themselves these ever-changing conditions in life are neutral, but the false...

Question: How do you integrate and apply the principle that "I am bigger than this moment" when your mind is programmed otherwise? How do you practice stopping reacting? Answer: You don't practice stopping reacting, you see that you can't stop reacting.

Student Talks: 7/26/2024 - Key Lesson: Until the peace and pleasure found within us is equal to -- or greater than -- any consolation found outside of ourselves -- then our power to be patient, loving, and profitable in every moment is, at best, conditional; nothing better serves to sustain anger, frustration, and fear than being identified with a level of self whose life is founded, at best, upon the sands of passing circumstances.

Topics covered: You must learn to trust the love you have for Truth, as opposed to trusting the self that loves itself; Just because you can't yet do what you love, does not mean that love is not real; There is an intelligence that governs and sustains every creature that lives... at every level; How do we know that other people are wrong? How do we know that the moment should not be the way that it is? Because we live with an unseen knower...

Student Talks: 3/22/2024 - Key Lesson: Once we learn what it means to see ourselves, to accept every impression as the herald of the new self-knowledge that it brings, then we will not only understand what it means to welcome each such revelation - whether wanted, or not - but to receive, with grace, whatever we are given to see as being true about ourselves.

Topic: Stop Struggling with Life and Set Yourself Free (Classroom Talk 2/21/24)

Topics covered: The real secret of letting go is to discover for yourself that there is a completely different order of understanding in which there is necessary practical struggle, without the useless struggle of trying of bringing an end to your pain; The world believes that it is natural to worry. There is another order of being that does not have in it any lingering negative states like worry...

Classroom Talk: 2/21/2024 - Spiritually speaking, we have but one problem: we are unable to see that the source of our conflict with life -- including the suffering it induces -- is inseparable from an unseen false belief, as follows: unless we keep struggling with unwanted moments, we'll never reach, let alone realize a time in our life... when we can finally rest from our struggles!