Disturbance

Classroom Talk: 2/14/2024 - Part 1: The witness to experience is not bound by it. Part 2: It's impossible to enjoy any moment in life, while fearfully trying to control it at the same time... that is, unless your idea of pleasure is the pain of making impossible demands on "others," not to mention upon yourself.

Topics covered: One basic mistake we make is that we are continually distracted into looking away from the revelations that each moment brings. It is a misunderstanding of our place in this world, and of the right order of things; Not one thing changes that doesn't change everything else in the entire system. Freedom is being able to see that, and in seeing it you know that you are not apart from it.

Student Talks: 10/13/2023 - Key Lesson: No peace appears outside of, or apart from the disturbance that conceals it, and no disturbance appears outside of, or apart from the peace that reveals it. They are inseparable celestial characters, each surrendering itself to become the other... in a ceaseless, seamless Divine act of creation.

Topics covered: Real peace is beyond imagination because it transcends the self that imagines it; It is a person's ideas about the nature of peace that produce the conditions that are subsequently blamed for taking that imagined peace away; "The roaring of lions, the howling of wolves, the raging of the stormy sea, and the destructive sword, are portions of eternity too great for the eye of man." -- William Blake

Topics covered: What if there really is only one answer to every painful question you have ever had about life?; Rumi said, "The antidote is in the venom." Sometimes alongside a poisonous plant in nature is another plant that is the remedy to the poison; Following right on the tail of any disturbing moment are questions about what the disturbance means and how to resolve it...

Student Talks: 8/11/2023 - Key Lesson: Part 1: There is no relief from the conflict and grief born of unrealized self-ignorance, which is why it's wise to seek self-knowledge. Part 2: The hardest thing in the world is to quietly do what life asks of you; but, if you attend to this first, Divine desire, all else is added... and you "shall not want."

Topics covered: Intellectual knowledge is not the same as understanding. Do not mistake thinking for being; A sudden sense of disturbance comes with the want of relief from that same disturbance; What we really want relief from are the unseen part of our consciousness that by its very nature has attracted the conditions that it then seeks freedom from; What is true refuses to live with conflict or act from weakness.

Student Talks: 7/14/2023 - Key Lesson: 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.

Topics covered: Everything that a human being imagines as being liberation is imagination. The truth cannot be captured in thought; You can only understand what is in you and what you have seen as part of yourself; The mind is in a constant struggle to reorganize the world it sees into what it imagines; You can't struggle to regain balance unless something in you believes it has been thrown off balance.

Topic: How to Cultivate a Quiet Mind (Classroom Talk 3/15/23)

Topics covered: The mind names the moment, resists the very moment that it has named, and then tries to save itself from what it is resisting; The mind endlessly talks to itself about what it must do to restore the peace that it believes it possessed before it was disturbed by life; According to the comparative mind, being complete demands that others see us that way.

Classroom Talk: 3/15/2023 - Here's one of the reasons the mind won't stop its incessant chattering: we've become so identified with being in the company of all the (familiar) voices in our head, we actually fear their silence means that, somehow, we've been left alone, or forsaken.