Enemies

Classroom Talk: 12/28/2025 - We do not become prisoners because we fail to escape some painful pattern. We become prisoners because we imagine there is a “someone” inside the pattern who must escape it. In truth, the sense of self that feels trapped is a creation of an unconscious nature struggling to escape the experience of itself. Once realized that the suffering inherent in this conflict is not yours…it no longer needs to be transcended; it's released without effort because it simply has no one left to belong to.

Remastered Classic Talk: 06/26/2016 - What is True is quiet; it is at peace with itself, whatever it silently reveals. What is untrue has no such peace; it is unable to be silent. What is True has no need to think about, let alone talk to itself about any lie it may see. What is untrue can't stop talking to itself in order to cover up what it doesn't want to see, ceaselessly telling itself that it sees truly.

Classroom Talk: 01/19/2025 - Awakening is the (graduated) process of negating all forms of identification; (it is) the realization that no matter how real the feel of any familiar sense of self - for its pleasure, or pain - nevertheless: no sensation does a "self" make, any more than a wave on the sea creates the sea from out of which it rises, and must return.

Classroom Talk: 8/28/2022 - Who is to be counted the most dangerous of all my enemies other than the one I see as being a "friend"... who is not.

What is any form of true art - whether expressed in verse, through action, or by a sublime vision revealed - other than the heart, having awakened, stretching its wings and rising into worlds yet known...and where, upon arriving there, claims them as its own...as does the eagle the open skies through which it effortlessly soars.

Classroom Talk: 9/26/2003 - Here is a tough spiritual lesson, but one that must be learned before we free ourselves from the circle of false friends: There was once a sheep who kept crying out, "Why do the wolves chase me, bite at my heels, and want to hurt me so?" The Shepherd smiled and replied: "Why do you like to wander through the woods where they live, and what makes you think that when another creature shows you its teeth that it's smiling at you?"

Classroom Talk: 8/31/2003 - Part 1: We want to be free of unpleasant inner states but refuse to consciously bear the weight of them...which is a mandatory interim stage between living with the burden of self and being released from it. Part 2: All forms of stress secretly serve the nature of those thoughts responsible for its creation.