Disturbance

Topics covered: We have been conditioned to believe that who we are is dependent upon conditions; Psychological fear is the belief that who we are can be threatened by exterior conditions; Fear needs to control the conditions that threaten the existence of that self-structure; You can't change conditions, but you can change your relationship to them. That's where fearlessness starts; Any fear that you feed is going to consume you in the end...

Topics covered:  Our lives are spent trying to change our lives in an attempt to find some kind of happiness as it has been imagined. Yet after all of these years, we are still trying to change our lives; There is the kind of life spent trying to change your life, and then there the kind of life that understands the futility of struggling to change your life as you imagine it.

Classroom Talk: 6/12/2024 - The mind asleep to itself doesn't realize that it created the problem that it can't stop trying to resolve; and that the more it struggles to try and think through a solution to its self-induced conflict, the greater grows its struggle to escape its unseen, self-induced suffering.

Student Talks: 6/7/2024 - Key Lesson: It's well known that storm-tossed waves often expose new treasures along the shoreline... and there is unexpected wealth to be collected by those who know the secret value of rough seas. And yet, even though most of us have little tolerance for anything that "rocks our boat," the truth of the matter is self-evident: Unwanted moments introduce us to dark parts of ourselves that would otherwise never be...

Topics covered: The only pain you have is that you don't know that you see life through a set of eyes that although they can't see any differently than they do, you suffer for their poor vision. The pain is always in the nature of the see-er; You live in a world the size of the one that you see, and you don't know what else to look for; You have to see how absolutely useless it is for you to habitually suffer over the things you do...

Topics covered: If you want to know why you don't have the kinds of impressions that change your life, it's because impressions don't come without humility. Humility is inseparable from true impressions; A single impression can change the entire direction of a person's life. When there is an actual impression, it changes the nature of what it has impressed itself upon; There are moments when, through an impression...

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.

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...

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.

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.

Topics covered: The unconscious mind tries to regain balance whenenver it registers a disturbance that interferes with its agenda; The distractions we turn to in order to escape the feeling of emptiness are created by the consciousness that must fill itself in order to know itself; Humanity's imagined heaven is the invention of a consciousness that is in hell; If you are still anxious and afraid...