Emptiness

Topics covered: A necessary realization along the upward path is that there are parts of you that do not want you to realize the truth of yourself; Although not really aware of it, the question of "Who am I" sits behind every pursuit, both worldly and spiritually; We are told that we are missing something, believe in the absolute truth of that idea, and then search for what we are told to pursue...

Student Talks: 1/6/2023 - Key Lesson: Nothing ends that something doesn't begin; nothing begins that something doesn't end. To know this as true is to no longer live in the fear of emptiness, let alone to covet the feeling of "fulness"... As neither of these psychological states, including the false sense of self (unconsciously) derived from them, exists without the temporary conditions that create the illusion of their reality.

Topics covered: Until we see a bigger picture of the real world that we live in, we won't be able to really know and experience endless new beginnings; If you want to experience what is new, then you are going to have to let go of your ideas about newness in favor of the actual relationship with what is always new; We can see the evidence of renewal all around us...

Student Talks: 4/15/2022 - Key Lesson: The Unknowable Source of Peace in real life far exceeds our reach... because it can't be grasped, let alone taken by hand; it can only be received by a heart that has willingly emptied itself of hope in all things seen.

Topics covered: What the wanter in you really wants is to continue wanting; A person can't understand a true teaching if he or she is already full of belief about what the teaching is; The nature of the thoughts that offer to lead you through a disturbance are connected to what you want and to what you don't want; The more conflict that is created by thought, the more that thought is called...

Student Talks: 3/18/2022 - Key Lesson: Part 1: By wanting are all things not wanted... thus created; much as joy and sorrow, bound as one... are related. Part 2: If you build it, they will come; if you leave it empty... it will be filled.

Topics covered: Every psychological pain is the outcome of a unseen desire having been thwarted; The source of your pain is the disparity between what you desire and what you can't possess; What seems like a new, reconfigured desire always comes in to fill the hole left by an old desire that was not fulfilled; There is really no such thing as a new desire. The only things that seem new are the objects of desire.

Topic: Cultivate Conscious Self-Doubt and Stop Arguing with Life (12/22/21 Classroom Talk)

Topic: Entrance into the Peace that Passes All Understanding (12/15/21 Classroom Talk)

Topics Covered: Stillness, peace and genuine security cannot be created by the mind. The peace that passes all understanding dwells in another order of our being that is beyond the intellect; The return journey to our spiritual home cannot be separated from the realization that you cannot fill yourself. Nothing that you fill yourself with will free you; The condition that is blamed for the way...

Classroom Talk: 12/15/2021 - There are no shortcuts to stillness. There is no trying to be empty; with almost no exception, effort is ambition...and though it is full of becoming, it is empty of Being. The darkness of (spiritual) emptiness is inseparable from the Light of awareness by whose grace we are given to see the unthinkable: it is impossible to fill ourselves.

Topic: Enter the Fullness of Real Life that Is Freedom Itself (8/25/21 Classroom Talk)