Topics covered: Spiritual parables and symbols are intended to convey celestial principles that words cannot explain; One of the chief deceptions that we fall for is that something is missing from our lives, and that we will be able to acquire it in a time to come. As a result, we don't want anything that gets in the way of that ambition; We spend our lives trying to possess what we perceive to be good, and avoid anything that is judged to be bad.

Topics covered: The meaning of the passage "Sell all and follow me" pertains to selling the psychological possessions of your past and your future; The hope in a time to come in which you will be free is the very prison you are in now; If you complete the moment, then you complete yourself. If you don't complete the moment, then you are tied to an incomplete nature seeking to complete itself in a time to come...

Classroom Talk: 9/27/2023 - You can't learn how to be; it's impossible. But you can see through the futility of the endless struggle to make yourself (feel) real. So, yes: it's hard to die to the hope that some time yet to come holds the key, but it does get easier the more you realize that whatever freedom you've imagined... doesn't exist without the fear that it doesn't.

Topics covered: Imitation is fear, and the purpose of life that we learned from the world is imitation; Fear is an invisible prison, but our minds see the prison as being the opposing conditions that we run into when we are looking for freedom; You believe in your captivity because fear always tells you that you can escape; The divided mind lives in constant fear of losing what it believes will make it fearless...

Topics covered: To paraphrase the well-known koan: If a tree falls in the woods, and there's no one there wishing it didn't, does it create fear or suffering?; The very struggle to escape the captivity of the consciousness that you are born into is why you remain a captive of that consciousness; The task is not to save yourself. The task is to realize a relationship with a part of you that does not need to be...

Topics covered: Anything that I think that I am, I fear that I am not. Fear is built into identification; The purpose of a true spiritual teaching is to develop the soul individually and collectively at the same time. It is not about "you"; We presently live in a spiritual darkness, and the purpose of spiritual work is to bring light into that darkness, but we have to be willing to allow that light to reveal and enact its Will...

Topics covered: Every moment is intended to bear fruit, but we are not intended to decide what that fruit is to be; Nothing gets stronger without natural resistance. Human beings have the choice as to whether or not they will make use of the natural resistance that is designed to make everything stronger; The fulfillment of your possibilities does not depend upon the number of possessions that you own...

Classroom Talk: 11/30/2022 - The often-painful experience of any personal limitation is our awareness of a difference between some higher ideal we feel drawn to actualize... and our (present) inability to fulfill that possibility; but, to be clear, this pain is not -- though it often seems to be -- proof that we've gone as far as we can go! In truth, the revelation of any limitation is a Divine invitation to walk into...

Topics covered: There will never be anything that we ever discover that was not already waiting in our consciousness to be revealed; Everything that is waiting to be discovered was made to be discovered; Whenever you have an impression of any kind, what you are really experiencing is your own consciousness; Part of boredom is the belief that one has already experienced every impression that is possible...

Classroom Talk: 11/23/2022 - No one has freedom of speech who -- for fear of being isolated, cast out and left alone -- feels unable to speak the truth they would, or to question what they see as false. And how much more so does the above hold true when it comes to the freedom to see oneself as one is... without endless self-judgment, and all of its painful justification...

Topics covered: Human beings cannot change themselves without the help of something that intervenes between them and their tendencies; If you ignore the celestial laws of life, you do so at your own risk. You can't ignore a true law without becoming anxious; There is no unnecessary suffering that is not born out of a lower order of consciousness believing that it is...

Classroom Talk: 7/13/2022 - Just as the Light of Truth is Timeless, so too are its Laws; the soul that learns to embody and serve their celestial purpose soon realizes liberation.