Topic: The 7 Elements of Enlightenment (5/12/21 Classroom Talk)

Topics Covered: Peace is not something that comes later. Peace is not something that we create. Peace already exists in the middle of a storm; We are intended to be living instruments of peace and kindness; Enlightenment is not a static condition; If you do not see the whole, then you are not a whole human being; Everyday is spent doing what you love, whether it is spent...

Classroom Talk: 5/12/2021 - Just as all the qualities of the ocean can be found in a single drop of its water, so do all the infinite expressions of consciousness -- high and low, light and dark -- dwell within our True Self: each and all… a drop of the Divine.

There do come to us in our lives, for any one of innumerable possible reasons, certain conditions that challenge the very fabric of our being. Certainly, none of us would think to ourselves, "I wish upon myself these difficult circumstances," and yet the truth is it is through and because of these same unwanted moments that we are granted the opportunity to meet parts of ourselves...

Topic: Transform Any Bitter Struggle with Life Into a Beautiful Lesson in Self-Liberation (11/18/20 Classroom Talk)

Topics Covered: Instead of setting us free, anything that we identify with as being the source of freedom turns out to be a prison; We resist moments because of the perceived threat of losing something, of somehow being made less by the moment; The mind that resists the moment will produce an image of what needs to be done to get through the moment unharmed...

Classroom Talk: 11/18/2020 - Identifying with resistance to any moment the mind points to as a painful problem of some kind... is the only real problem there is in that moment. To see the fact of this -- which is the purpose of all true spiritual teachings -- is the end of looking for any kind of power to protect, or otherwise restore some paradise...

If you haven't noticed this yet about yourself, it's easy to see in others: we each seem to carry the weight of the world on our shoulders. The nature of this burden may change with age. When young, we feel the weight of having to choose a direction in life. As adults, we feel encumbered by all the perceived requirements of an active life: trying to control events...

How can someone be given so much and -- rather than being grateful for the abundance of these gifts -- be so negative over a single element in the midst of them? Closer examination of such a situation, and the inconsolable level of self that gives rise to it, may show us that we have more in common with this discontented character than not. It's impossible for us to...

Topics covered: You're not going to find what you really want outside of yourself; Unless we have an actual love of something, we usually take the path of least resistance; Limitation is always an invitation to revelation; We always do what we value; Becoming is an illusion because it requires imagination; Keep it RRRIL - Relationship, Revelation, Realization, Integration, Liberation...

Classroom Talk: 6/17/2020 - When we seek this world, we may win some of its powers and possessions that are fashioned in time, but when we seek the Celestial, we find ourselves – and that we have something within us which made the stars.

Topics Covered: The seed in time reveals what it already is; The seed dies so that the next form of itself can live; Freedom is not a static condition; Freedom is the gradual release from beliefs about what freedom is; The journey is an endless discovery of new levels of freedom; Faith is the ability to see truth in scale; Frustration is the evidence of a misunderstood resistance...