Topics covered: Real self-transformation requires self-knowledge; Certainty is nothing but masked uncertainty that is really the wish to be secure; Be more interested in observing your reactions than you are interested in what those reactions say you need to do in order to be free from the disturbance. See what reactions tell you is true about the moment; Challenging the mystery of your reactions is the same as challenging the mystery of yourself...

Topics covered: When we try to avoid the consequences of our choices, we believe that the best thing to do is to make more choices that lead to more unwanted consequences; Conflict in consciousness is always a war between what it wants and what it does not want, along with its identification with those desires; You can't have a fear that isn't born out of a desire that you have identified with...

Topics covered: Anxious thoughts about what to do in an unwanted moment IS the unwanted "moment" that you are struggling with; To know better than to not-want what you are experiencing is to see that all of the actions involved in not-wanting are futile. To know better is to recognize that you have been there in that same place, not-wanting your experience, a million times before...

Classroom Talk: 11/29/2023 - Our unconscious resistance to any unwanted moment ensures its continuation, and here's why: there is no lingering resistance that's not a creation of some form of (unseen) identification with the moment being resisted. To this understanding, add the following insight by whose light we are helped set free: identification is fixation, which means the more we struggle to escape any unwanted moment...

Topics covered: How long do you want to live a life in which you can be carried off at any time, beaten up, and then released whenever your captor is done with you?; The beginning of the end of useless suffering is in seeing that, at present, you do not really know why you suffer. There is not one solution that you think you know that is going to save you; If you ever want to stop being thrown into a prison whenever conditions seem to conspire against you...

Classroom Talk: 11/15/2023 - No single substance -- whether physical, mental, or emotional -- creates an addiction, let alone the pain and conflict inherent in its corresponding dependency; rather dependency is the birthplace of all false solutions with which we first become identified, and then become addicted to... in the vain hope that it has the power to release us from a pain we have yet to understand, let alone resolve.

Topics covered: Each time a different sense of self comes to the forefront, that self cannot remember that it is reliving the same old experience of itself, all the while believing that they are new experiences; When there is no awareness, your identity is inseparable from the quality of the reaction that is going through you. Your sense of self is determined by any reaction that becomes your guide...

Classroom Talk: 11/8/2023 - Much as a stalking tiger uses woodland shadows to hide its intention from its intended prey, so does (our) weakness hide behind the (momentary) strength of any negative reaction we become identified with... even as it consumes us.

Topics covered: The sleeping mind convinces us that something outside of us is to blame for whatever feeling -- "good" or "bad" -- is coursing through us at any given moment; The sleeping mind is always trying to find itself in conditions outside of itself; Resistance nullifies all of the higher qualities and faculties that we have the potential to be in relationship with...

Classroom Talk: 8/2/2023 - There is no new resistance; regardless how "fresh" the nature of a negative state -- be it fear, anger, frustration or regret -- the only thing that's actually changed in any seemingly new painful moment is what's being blamed for its appearance.

Topics covered: The divided state of our consciousness is always struggling in some form of contradiction; Desire itself is a formulation of the opposites; The original definition of the word "Mammon" pertained to an endless desire for possessions; The wreckage of desire are the psychological strings that come attached to any desire that we are not aware of; A negative reaction knows exactly what is the cause of...

Classroom Talk: 6/28/2023 - Part 1: Hidden deep within every desire there dwells an unseen fire; handle carefully... if you don't want to get burned. Part 2: A divided mind is the breeding ground of self-defeat; not only is it incapable of seeing its own contradictions, but then it struggles with them in a futile attempt to free itself from a conflict that wouldn't exist if it didn't first create it somewhere in the darkness of itself.