Disturbance

A true human being is a "feeling" human being, not a "thinking" human being. Real life is an impersonal, complete feeling. We live in a stream of divine energy, and there is a difference between trying to be alive through thinking -- which produces the sensation of life -- and knowing that you are alive.

Have you ever wondered why deer, squirrels, birds, and other wild animals in nature seem so tense? Many wild animals are skittish and high-strung because that is their nature. They require this natural tension for the protection and preservation of their species. When it comes to human beings, we have wrongly come to rely upon an unnatural tension as a requirement for our own psychological pre...

What does it feel like to deny something? Is it a good feeling, or a bad feeling? We all know that it is a bad feeling. When something happens that we do not want, and we then deny the event, it feels bad. On the other hand, what does it feel like to want something when we envision something positive? We can easily see that when we are envisioning what we want, we feel good! In order to unders...

The principle longing we have as human beings is to be ourselves. But this essential longing is always interfered with by something. Here is the essence of the problem: you can never be yourself and protect yourself at the same time. Why? Personality has two principle functions: procurement, which is getting what I desire, and protection, which involves keeping things away from me that threat...

Have you ever wondered why it's said, "Silence is Golden?" Hidden in these words is a secret instruction by which a person can find a peace that passes all understanding. Silence is golden because, for the individual who is willing to remain in that silence with his or her own suffering, that person finds spiritual gold. The suffering in silence is the purification of the soul and the suffe...

Topics covered: We try to change exterior conditions in order to change our experience; There is nothing more practical than self-understanding. And there is nothing more empowering than self-knowledge; When we are afraid and anxious, who or what is it that is taking the action to change my experience? Fear and anxiety pretend to be guides; Letting go is about discovering the parts of us that promise power but ultimately make us powerless.

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.

Topics covered:  There is no condition in your life that isn't perfectly suited to change you for the better; The way we are now, our reactions are always there before we are; Inherent in every reaction is "What does this mean?" and "Hurry up and make a choice."

Topics covered:  "Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto a merchant man, seeking goodly pearls: Who, when he had found one pearl of great price, went and sold all that he had, and bought it." -- New Testament; What if you understood that there is no future in what you are identified with?; Everything about interior work comes down to seeing that you have been blind. The pearl of great price is the capacity to see life through new eyes.

Topics covered:  The world we live in is both a laboratory and a gymnasium, in which we are intended to experiment and exercise in order to discover why we are here; The world cannot give you what you are really looking for. You eventually realize that you have to look someplace else; There is no such tomorrow that will ever free you from what you believe holds you captive.

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.