Topic: How to Cultivate a Quiet Mind (Classroom Talk 3/15/23)

Topics covered: The mind names the moment, resists the very moment that it has named, and then tries to save itself from what it is resisting; The mind endlessly talks to itself about what it must do to restore the peace that it believes it possessed before it was disturbed by life; According to the comparative mind, being complete demands that others see us that way.

Classroom Talk: 3/15/2023 - Here's one of the reasons the mind won't stop its incessant chattering: we've become so identified with being in the company of all the (familiar) voices in our head, we actually fear their silence means that, somehow, we've been left alone, or forsaken.

Topic: Bringing Silence to a Noisy Mind that Won't Stop Talking to Itself (10/20/21 Classroom Talk)

Topics Covered: Where does an inner dialog get its authority over us? It starts with our unconscious consent to identify with those thoughts; The root of self-talk begins with judgment; Self-talk is inseparable from the moment of conflict where something happens and it is interpreted as a threat to who I think I am and what I'm identified with; No self-talk starts without being triggered...

Classroom Talk: 10/20/2021 - Part 1: The sure way to guarantee that any suffering continues unabated is to keep talking to yourself about it! Part 2: The more we talk to ourselves about how we need to make some real change in our life, the less we see how consoling ourselves with ideas for a brighter tomorrow keeps us from realizing a simple truth...

In this question and answer session, Guy explains that not wanting to see something about ourselves actually attaches us to the very thing that we say we don't want. So the task is not to change what we see. Instead, the task is to observe ourselves so that we can be changed by the very awareness that is observing.

Topic: How to Walk Out of the Haunted House of Endless Wants (11/11/20 Classroom Talk)

Classroom Talk: 11/11/2020 - Here's the first step in quieting the mind: SEE the fact that if we weren't always talking to ourselves about what we want, or don't want... that most of what troubles us would just disappear on its own!

Real reactions are wordless, soundless, and even without familiar content. They are just the expression of something timeless touching something in time. The mind talks to itself in order to define these reactions for its own purposes, using its own past content in a vain attempt to reconcile the moment. The true reconciliation of any reaction is built into the very moment of the appearance of it...

From this day forward, be a careful observer of the moving pictures in your own mind. Learn to watch all the various scenes without casting yourself as any of the players on the screen. Remember, nothing you see in that darkened theater is who you really are.

Meditation Talk: 5/24/2019 - All psychological fear is born out of our unseen relationship with a lower level of consciousness that fears the death of whatever sense of "self" it first imagines into existence. It is our unconscious identification with its fear of dying that maintains its fear-ridden "life." To see the truth of our collusion with this...