Consciousness

Remastered Classic Talk: 7/22/15 - To identify with even the brightest star is to lose sight of the boundless heavens within which it shines... without whose vast tracts of darkness would no celestial light be seen.

Topics covered:  Spiritually speaking, the very action of looking for something often separates you from what you are looking for; We live in a world that exceeds our understanding of it; If a tree falls in the woods and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? Can there be a sound without an ear to hear it? And can there be hearing without the awareness of it? Hearing does not exist apart from relationship. Everything is a relationship.

Remastered Classic Talk: 2/8/17 - 

Part 1: This moment -- now -- is the timeless ground, seed, and fulfillment of all that is possible for us to be; to discover its riches is the first step in realizing, and then reclaiming our True Self.

Part 2: Wanting to be anything other than aware of what creation is ceaselessly showing you about yourself is wasting what Life itself wants for you: a chance to realize, and become as one with a new and higher level of consciousness attainable in no other way.

Remastered Classic Talk: 11/25/15 - 

Part 1: If it is our wish to touch what is whole, to be touched by what is holy... then we must stop "reaching" (for it) and start being the seeing that is already the whole of us.

Part 2: We cannot "make" things whole any more than the moon makes itself full by its own light. Rather our work is to serve as a witness to life's ceaseless, concurrent appearance of fullness and emptiness and, by so doing, to unite (within us) the awareness of Timeless consciousness with the experience of its own creations living in time.

Student Talks: 9/19/2025 - We are not only complacent in cultivating the imperfections inherent in our divided nature, but increasingly—individually and culturally—we glorify these very weaknesses that, by grace, are revealed for what they are: stumbling blocks to the soul’s development.

Remastered Classic Talk: 05/04/16 - The Vine doesn't fear the passing of the branch; it was there before it. The Vine gives rise to the branch; it will be there long after the branch withers in winter winds, and falls away. The branch fears its own passing, knowing nothing of the Vine from out of which it has come... or that it will be born again come the light of spring. All is Vine for those who can see the branch for what it is.

Let every search for a solution to the suffering you feel begin in the unlit corners of your own consciousness, and soon you will never again wonder "why" you feel the worries, fear, and the bitterness that you do.

Spiritual blindness is not of the eye; (it is) the dark effect of being unconsciously identified with a lower level of consciousness that has no interest in looking beyond its own deeply conditioned beliefs... for fear of falling off the edge of the only world it knows.

Topics covered:  People go into pain over being told that their pain is self-inflicted; Most of us are more interested in trying to answer our pain (resolve it) than in understanding it; The very last thing that a human being wants to do is give up their suffering.

Classroom Talk: 10/2/2024 - Continuing to look for something new outside of yourself is like rearranging the clothes in your closet and, after you're done, going back through it hoping to find the experience of some unexpected joy.

Topics covered:  Presently we put our explanation of the moment over exploration of the moment. A reversal must take place. The first shall be last, and the last shall be first; The learning of real lessons is more important than anything else that takes place in our lives; An epiphany is the marriage between the exterior condition and the part of ourselves that is stirred by that condition; We are created to participate in the movement of life rather than trying to control it as we do now.

Topic: A Tale Of Two Natures: The Unthinkable Revelation that Leads to Self-Liberation (Classroom Talk 6/21/23)