Imagination

Key Lesson: Most people are so afraid of dying they are unable to see that agreeing to identify with any imagined state of self is itself a form of death unfolding in slow motion.

Student Talks: 11/21/2025 - A quiet mind never goes out looking for guidance because it never gets lost in thought.

Just as we can only move freely in a darkened room when there is light to reveal what surrounds us, so it is with the unseen dimensions within us: in any given moment, we live in a world no larger than the measure of our understanding.

Student Talks: 8/8/2025 - Given the values of the world in which we live today, it's no small wonder that the first of the beatitudes -- "Blessed are the poor in spirit" -- more often than not proves itself a painful paradox regarding the notion of real wealth; for the truth is -- as Christ taught -- that the less we take ourselves to be, the more we're given to discover all that we are, and forever will be.

Fear and anxiety do not exist outside of an old mind that -- moment by moment -- creates these dark states in a deeply divided space within itself.

Imagining all that remains to be done to realize the contentment we seek -- or that we must struggle with to attain some illusive peace of mind -- is like trying to calm the ripples on the surface of a reflecting pond...by throwing a polished stone into its waters.

Student Talks: 8/25/2023 - Key Lesson: Having no real direction of its own in this life... a wandering mind is incapable of recognizing the difference between finding the promise of (another) false purpose to live for, and the pit into which it falls... as it's tempted to reach for the treasure it imagines it has found there.

Student Talks: 6/17/2022 - Key Lesson: It's the rare dog, indeed, that doesn't dream about -- and then chase after -- a "bone."

Student Talks: 4/8/2022 - Key Lesson: Practicing the Presence -- working to remember the truth of yourself -- doesn't necessarily change the kind of events that come to you; that's not how it works. But, what your inner work does change is for whom -- upon what 'I' -- will these events fall and, accordingly, the purpose they serve.

Student Talks: 5/7/2021 - Key Lesson:You can't heal the pain of the past by talking to yourself about it... any more than you can collect spilled milk, and coax it back into the bottle.

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: 6/7/2019 - Key Lesson: No image is alive. If the pictures we cling to had the power to satisfy the desire that creates them, then a picture of food would ease our hunger, and painting a smile on the reflection of our face in a mirror would help console our broken heart.