Topics covered: Our lives are currently predicated on dealing what is unreal, the pursuit for answers to suffering that is blamed on outside conditions that seem to be responsible for the suffering but in reality are not; Every image that comes into your mind to lend you a sense of security also comes with a second force built into it that will prove it is unreal; A false sense of self, a false identity...

Topics covered: What is the point of an experience if it carries us right back to where we started?; What is the point of experience if not to learn and grow inwardly through the experience?; You cannot separate how you experience any given moment from the corresponding sense of yourself in that same moment; We are presently always giving ourselves a familiar sense of ourselves moment to moment...

Student Talks: 5/6/2022 - Key Lesson: Part 1: Until we can see that unconscious identification sits at the root of all useless suffering nothing real can change for us -- let alone within us -- save for what we're moved to imagine -- and then identify with -- as the next new solution to our pain. Part 2: False 'I' is a disease. Real I is the healing. Awakening is the prescription...

Topics covered: Individuals who understand the futility of trying to save their own life -- through thought -- will gain their life; We must learn to use the presence of psychological pain as an invitation to not just question the things we believe are valuable, but to launch an investigation into how we ever came to that conclusion; Whatever we have become identified with over the...

Topics Covered: Letting go has nothing to do with anything that the mind names outside of itself that it says should be dropped. Letting go happens naturally with awareness of the consciousness that names and defines conditions outside of us; Is it possible to never again want to be anyone other than who you are? Yes, when you see clearly that no other person on Earth can be anything more...

Topics Covered: There is nothing more useless than looking outside of yourself to fix a pain that is not outside of you; All psychological suffering comes out of an identification with a problem outside of yourself that a part of you is trying to resolve; Real peace cannot be disturbed; Without disturbances there would be no consciousness of the world around us. But the natural and inevitable...

Topics Covered: There is no freedom without understanding the root of fear; We cannot have a problem that is not connected to the fear of losing something. Inherent in any anxiety-inducing problem is an unseen threat; Anything that threatens what we depend upon for our identity is perceived as an enemy; Fear is always trying to save itself from perishing. But listening to...

Student Talks: 11/20/2020 - Key Lesson: When it comes to the Great Way that leads to self-liberation -- of entering the Kingdoms above and beyond this temporal realm -- there is no such thing as "getting there." There is only getting the whole of that image, along with its false sense of self, out of the way.

Topics Covered: We're convinced that something is in the way of our happiness. The real question is: How do we get ourselves out of the way?; The sense of self that desperately seeks for happiness only exists as long as it pursues what it wants. The painful sense of self, and the destination it seeks, don't exist without each other; Spiritually speaking, there is no "getting there" because...

Topics Covered: At a certain point along the path, a person begins to see that they have been caught in a circle of reacting to conditions; All true spiritual teachings point out that we are not a single person; we are made up of a legion of temporary identities. A good portrayal of this condition is the classic Robert Louis Stevenson book, "Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde"; It is impossible to find...