Conscious Suffering

Useless suffering can't be separated from useless resistance. The more you resist something, the more you suffer, believing that somehow or other your resistance to what you don't want to do (or be) is going to separate you or liberate you from the thing you don't want. Resistance is an unconscious form of attention, and the more attention you give to something you don't want, the more of it you get.

We are born into a universe of exchange, always bathing in a host of light, vibration, and sound, produced by an exchange of infinite bodies that are a part of our reality, both visible and invisible. But how aware am I -- in my body, in my life -- that everything exists as it does for me, even my very breath, because there's an exchange taking place?

At our current level of consciousness, we experience ourselves as beings who have a certain emotional state of energy come into us, which defines and shapes our individuality. But the fact of the matter is that there is no such self. Not really. There are just these states of energy and the fleeting sense of self that their undetected possession produces...

Classroom Talk: 11/19/2023 - The single greatest unseen cause of premature aging, stress-related health issues, and ultimately of death is... the deeply mistaken, agonizing idea that somehow our constant struggle to control the outcome of any moment we fear will one day free us from these moments we fear.

Classroom Talk: 10/22/2023 - Any time the mind makes a "package" out of some unwanted moment -- wrapping its reaction (to it) in familiar troubled thoughts, and negative feelings -- it does so at the cost of exchanging a priceless gift it's been given... in favor of giving itself another painful experience (of itself) that it doesn't know it's created for itself!

Classroom Talk: 7/9/2023 - When the winds of fortune blow hot or cold, sweet or sour, don't lean toward one or away from the other. Instead, remain upright; only the balanced mind can walk safely over and through the uneven surfaces of this world.

Classroom Talk: 6/23/2023 - The size and strength of any anxious, or otherwise tormenting reaction is no bigger or stronger than the extent of our resistance in the moment of its appearance. It's always the shadow we don't want that engulfs us.

Classroom Talk: 7/3/2022 - Part 1: Unattended thoughts attract unwanted relationships. Part 2: Identifying with any painful reaction is a form of negative fascination; it is an inverse form of Narcissism where we feel drawn to "stare" at -- to dwell on -- whatever may be that dark thought or feeling we're so sure we don't want to see. Stranger still, the more we resist the...

Classroom Talk: 5/1/2022 - Part 1: Until we can see that unconscious identification sits at the root of all useless suffering nothing real can change for us -- let alone within us -- save for what we're moved to imagine -- and then identify with -- as the next new solution to our pain. Part 2: False "I" is a disease. Real I is the healing. Awakening is the prescription. Now you know the...

Classroom Talk: 4/10/2019 -The only real problem we have with any unwanted moment in life -- regardless how stressed, or conflicted may seem its temporary character... is that we have yet to see our unconscious involvement in its creation, and subsequent appearance.

What good is the love of Truth without standing up for the freedom it promises to those whom love it? This means that we must attend to, embrace, and then enact what is Light, Right, and True, even in the midst of all that may seem wrong within or around us. Only by daring to bring this intention into the midst of any such dark moment are we given to see -- first hand -- how His unfailing stre...