Illusion

The easiest thing in the world is to walk around unconsciously feeling superior to everyone we meet. But with what do we measure? A critical spirit? A judgmental mind? What kind of eyes have to look down on another to convince themselves of up?

Can you count the number of times you have been present in a moment of your life and realized how much you wished you weren't you? That you hadn't done what you just did, and wished you would never do it again... loathing yourself for your weakness, despising yourself for your ambition that compromises you with every step you take, feeling frightened over some possession you've managed to acquire in the hope of some freedom it promised...

One of the things about the spiritual journey that is so difficult -- because of what it asks of a person -- is that we must reach the point where we look at our life as it is and realize that we cannot have what our heart longs for in our life such as it is. We come to a full recognition that we are indeed a house, and a spirit in a house, and that the house has had its way with the spirit but that the spirit was never intended to be commanded, dominated by the house...

Every time you get negative, you drain from yourself something vital to the development of your soul. But every time you catch yourself in those dark waters that carry you away, you add something to your development by working to understand them. The source of those dark, raging waters is an illusion. It is the illusion that is part and parcel with the present activity of your mind...

Regardless of the assertion of any negative state that seeks to convince you otherwise (using its painful presence within you as "proof" that the prison you're locked within will stand until the end of time), apply this one great truth: All self-punishing states are "lies." They must break down if they don't succeed in breaking down your willingness to test their reality. How do you...

Student Talks: 5/3/2024 - Key Lesson: The cost of "knowing" real beauty -- of realizing all that is timelessly noble and true -- is to be the emptiness into which it pours, and from out of which it will pour again.

Student Talks: 5/12/2023 - Key Lesson: There can be no "life after death" without realizing an order of Love that has no fear of dying. This Timeless Witness to its (own) creation doesn't see death as the end of life, but rather as its invisible partner in a ceaseless act of love.

Student Talks: 11/11/2022 - Key Lesson: Real Life is a miracle unfolding in slow motion. The eyes that can see this truth are those no longer blinded by the nature of thought whose sleight-of-hand creates and sustains the illusion of passing time; to see things as they are is to be what we are: travelers through a time and realm whose peace passes all understanding.

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.

Student Talks: 6/12/2020 - Key Lesson: The truth is, we are never trapped by any experience. The painful experience of feeling trapped is the effect of the trap, not the trap itself. The mouse always blames the cheese...

Student Talks: 5/29/2020 - Key Lesson: The unconscious, spiritually asleep mind is a machine of "1,000 dances" whose repetitious steps are incapable of creating, let alone moving an inch in a truly new direction.

Student Talks: 11/8/2019 - Key Lesson: Pretending -- to yourself, or around others -- that "all is well" is the unseen hell of the false self. On the other hand, the realization that all unfolds -- moment to moment -- in the only way that it can is not only the first step in awakening from this lower level of consciousness...