Judgment

Stop being a victim of "Yesterday's News"! Calling on "what was" to deal with "what is"... is like being stranded on a deserted island, without any food, and hoping to make your growing hunger pains go away by reading and re-reading "Best Places to Dine Around Town"... the one magazine that washed up with you when you staggered onto shore.

Perhaps you've worked hard to be more aware of yourself in the Now, and that for this effort you catch a glimpse of how quick you are to judge others, to criticize them for their "failings." This pain that strains you -- and those you touch with it -- is itself a creation of a false sense of your own perfection. But your awareness of its punishing presence within you is the same as your invitation to transcend the negative nature that is responsible for it.

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?

We can never hope to be free as long as any part of us struggles with, or suffers over what others are doing, have done, or won't do with their lives. Besides, if we could remain aware of the often-compromised state of our own character, that is, how we still do those things to others that we don't want to do, this awakened conscience would stir in us a new need. Rather than worrying about whether so-and-so gets his comeuppance for being the...

At some point in our lives we have all dealt with uncomfortable moments where an unexpected or unwanted change in one near to us brings up some unpleasant reaction in us. Of course we are usually very quick to find fault with this person, but here is the real, invisible story. The reason we fall under the rule of these reaction-driven dark states, and then find ourselves trying to dictate the life direction of the "offending" person, is that something...

Real life is not by the numbers; it is impossible to "know" and grow at the same time. Yes, one can have a formula for a prescription drug, or a recipe for a good green salad; but there is no system of thought that can stand up to the ever-shifting changes of real life, let alone meet those same changes fearlessly. The self that knows itself through thought can never develop beyond the content of itself, any more than a math equation can suddenly outgrow...

One of the most slippery parts of the upper path is the temptation to judge ourselves -- to loath ourselves for whatever "weakness" is exposed to us in the moment. The act of judging ourselves in times like these seems natural and even necessary if we hope to ever "outgrow" our own limitations as revealed. But this kind of self-laceration is a Trojan horse within whose dark recesses lies...

Student Talks: 12/05/2025 - 

Part 1

If you find yourself harboring resentment -- filled with angry thoughts or painful regrets -- having surrendered to the suffering induced by your own negative considerations... be warned: in the darkness of that nature is where affliction hides; it abides there, breeding the conflict it has with the natural tides of life, waiting to consume those who consent to enter the hell wherein it dwells.

Part 2

The hell in which we dwell is the conflicted experience of a conditioned mind trapped in a time it can't escape because it recreates it each time it returns there to resist and relive, again, a time of its own making!

Student Talks: 11/28/2025 - The clearer we can see that negative states must have an excuse to exist within us, the sooner -- and more strongly -- will arise in us a refusal to grant them a place anywhere in our heart, mind, or soul.

Student Talks: 9/19/2025 - We are not only complacent in cultivating the imperfections inherent in our divided nature, but increasingly—individually and culturally—we glorify these very weaknesses that, by grace, are revealed for what they are: stumbling blocks to the soul’s development.

Student Talks: 3/28/2025 - We can be -- and often are -- sound asleep going through the motions of life with our eyes wide open. To be able to see — to be aware of - what our mind is actually looking at, experiencing, and responding to…is the first step in the process of awakening; it not only strengthens our wish to attend to the present moment, but to remember that any time our mind is unattended…it slumbers in fitful dreams, from which it cannot awaken itself. 

Student Talks: 2/07/2025 - Nothing created has (a) weakness that isn't (already) married to a strength that fulfills its purpose. The only exception to this celestial law is found in an unconscious nature that imagines it has some strength of its own, and that - for having become identified with the illusion of this false image - lives in constant fear of anything that comes along to challenge its dream.