Eternity

Of what use is our endless struggle to adapt and even achieve some of the more common culturally-valued prizes, knowing (as all of us do) that nothing we can ever possess has the power to stave off our own inevitable passing? The following quotation that I just love is from Vernon Howard, a great twentieth century mystic, that really not only helps to put this idea that we're...

We are always trying to build a self that won't disappear out of the things that are coming in the stream of time, never understanding that nothing we find floating upon this temporal stream can ever be timeless. And if this is true about the nature of the world's ever-becoming events, how much more impermanent is our sense of identity derived from them? But we're slow to learn!

We all want the comfort of knowing that there are things we can count on, that there is something in this life permanent. Yet, everything seems to slip away from us; people, places, and events all change. And as they go so does our sense of security, leaving us once again seeking something to give us a permanent sense of well-being. There is a cure for this seemingly endless longing...

We don't typically have much awareness of what is timeless because we are usually the prisoner of a mind that is seeking to become something in time. However, it is possible to see -- without taking thought -- that everything eternal is already in perfect harmony. This means that we can stop struggling uselessly to put the Universe back into order.

Seas become shores, Shores become seas: They exchange places In the flow of Time But...not in Eternity.

Topics covered:  Presently we put our explanation of the moment over exploration of the moment. A reversal must take place. The first shall be last, and the last shall be first; The learning of real lessons is more important than anything else that takes place in our lives; An epiphany is the marriage between the exterior condition and the part of ourselves that is stirred by that condition; We are created to participate in the movement of life rather than trying to control it as we do now.

Student Talks: 2/16/2024 - Key Lesson: Life is change; it is creation revealing itself. We can either realize our existence within its movement as a designated part of its Divine design, or we can continue to struggle with unwanted moments in the false belief that the pain of our resistance (to them) proves we know how life is supposed to unfold.

Topics covered: Every unwanted moment is the fear of death; God's life is a great undiscovered ocean that is already within you. The ocean doesn't exist outside of you and you have always been a part of it, but as yet you do not know how to participate. Seeing that you do not know is the beginning of participating; The fear of "un" is fear of the unknown, the undiscovered, the unwanted. Until you get over the fear of "un" you'll never know...

Topic: Walk Away from the Pain of Yesterday (Classroom Talk 12/7/22)

Topics covered: If you still have an enemy of any kind, then up until now you have spent your life suffering uselessly; No moment in time repeats itself. Creation is eternally new. Then the question to ask ourselves is: how do we find ourselves stuck in what seems to be the same painful situations over and over again?; Yesterday's pain does not exist today without the consciousness that carries it over...

Classroom Talk: 12/7/2022 - It is impossible to teach the true nature of mindfulness, but it is possible to see the consequences of living from an unattended mind.

Student Talks: 7/1/2022 - Key Lesson: Part 1: The secret entrance into the unknowable Divine can never be found in this or that thought, but only within a faith-based action that must be trial-tested before it can be counted on as unquestionably True. Part 2: The instant that we stir any element of time -- of thought -- into our experience of the present moment we have sown...