Following is a small excerpt from a "fireside chat" between Guy Finley and Dr. Ellen Dickstein as they explored the topic of The Power to Release Regrets and Get Over Guilt. Guy: We don't "learn" the way that we think we learn... which is by reliving things. No one learns anything by reliving a situation. Ellen: This reminds me of something you said that I found very interesting...

Topic: Stop Reliving Your Past and Realize Real Life (Classroom Talk 4/10/24)

Classroom Talk: 4/10/2024 - It's impossible to see, let alone walk the indefinable path of the presence moment until we realize we've been deceived into looking at virtually every moment of life through the 'I's of the past.

Topic: Take a Vacation from Yourself and Leave Your Troubles Behind You (Classroom Talk 1/31/24)

Classroom Talk: 1/31/2024 - The awareness of the whole of ourselves is the cancellation of time... for in this undivided state of consciousness no memory is needed to produce a sense of self; instead, we gaze upon ourselves as we are: already a complete Being.

Student Talks: 12/1/2023 - Key Lesson: Since it is impossible to be unhappy over what you don't have without first having been subjected to some form of unseen painful comparison, this means the true source of one's unhappiness isn't because of some passing condition, but rather is a creation of an unconscious nature -- punishing itself -- each time it negatively reacts to some imagined happiness lost.

Topics covered: Spiritual ideas are intended to introduce you to another world within you that cannot be threatened by any outside condition; Spiritual principles do not exist in order to save you. They exist for you to see how futile it is to try to save yourself as you currently are; There cannot be a negative reaction without unseen resistance. And there is no unseen resistance without identification.

Student Talks: 8/18/2023 - Key Lesson: Negative reactions -- in fact any form of painful resistance -- prevail only when we fail to remember it is -- at once -- our Divine right, and our work to transform, and transcend them.

Topics covered: Without being able to see the big picture, we are lost. And negativity can only see its particular enemy of the moment; The divided consciousness derives a strong identity through resistance and its attending negativity; We have learned to live with unconscious suffering to a large extent, until the pain reaches a level at which it can no longer be denied; Negative identification is the unconscious...

Student Talks: 5/26/2023 - Key Lesson: Nothing in the universe can make you relive some painful moment from your past as long as you choose to live in the self-renewing awareness that no old dark thought has the power to define you, let alone drag you down.

Topics covered: What all of humanity struggles to overcome -- in vain -- is the past; We cannot separate what we call "the past" from the level of consciousness that derives its identity from it; Rushing is an attempt to get away from the experience of the past to a future that is imagined by the same consciousness; Any conflict with any moment does not exist apart from the past.

Student Talks: 3/17/2023 - Key Lesson: Before we can hope to stop reliving any unwanted moment from our past, we must see that our experience of it is inseparable from how we ourselves have named it.