Classroom Talk: 2/7/2024 - Either we have command over our negative reactions or -- without ever knowing so -- our reactions take command of us, making us little more than unwitting servants of whatever painful thought or feeling we've empowered to push us around.

Classroom Talk: 5/31/2023 - Part1: The fear of pain, the pain of fear: See how they feed one another... And (your) liberation draws near. Part 2: Just as the threshold of a house is recognized as the entrance into it, so should our pain be seen, and understood, in a similar light... for its appearance tells the same story, only in spiritual terms: not only (is it) a doorway into an increasingly fearless...

Classroom Talk: 12/1/2021 - The more we think about what's wrong with life, with others, or about ourselves, the less we see this self-evident, but simple truth that once realized... helps set us free: the more we think about any disappointment, or the prison of some lingering pain we can't seem to escape, the more we are made a captive of those very same thoughts.

Classroom Talk: 9/16/2020 - Nothing keeps you more aware of a pain you don't want... than does your struggle to escape it. Learn to see what truth is trying to show you about your strengths, instead of listening to your weakness tell you where to hide.

Classroom Talk: 7/21/2019 - Part 1: Many are those who love, but only because they are loved, and so their love is not true. But those who love, in spite of being spurned... their love alone is true. Part 2: Don't do what hurts another, but not for the sake of being someone who doesn't do what he believes his "goodness" forbids...

Classroom Talk: 12/9/2022 - Without resistance to its appearance... there is no negativity inherent in suffering; to realize the fact of this truth is the first step in proving (to yourself) that all forms of psychological pain are optional.

Classroom Talk: 4/24/2022 - It is a distinct stage in the development of the aspirant when -- rather than being easily distracted by some imagined consolation for his pain, or by concluding who is to blame for it -- his first and real preference in that dark moment is to increase his awareness of his condition, and not to find ways around it.

Classroom Talk: 12/26/2021 - Many times the best gift we can offer another is what we're willing to keep for ourselves; for instance, rather than burdening others with our fears and doubts -- or judging them for the same -- we choose, instead, to bear this pain in conscious silence. So that not only might we realize a spiritual strength that can't be awakened in any other way...

Classroom Talk: 11/21/2021 - The more we dwell on something in our life that we wish wasn't so, the more we soak ourselves in negative energies created by our own resistance. The longer we soak, the more we suffer; the more we suffer, the more we resist what seems to be the unwanted event when, in truth, what we are really drowning in... are the dark dreams of our own sleeping consciousness.

Classroom Talk: 8/1/2021 - Part 1: Whoever doesn't know himself, suffers uselessly for the sake of ignorance. Whoever works to know himself, agrees to suffer for the sake of wisdom. Whoever becomes wise, slays the suffering born of ignorance. And whoever transcends the useless suffering of ignorance shares in the birth and burden of creation, in which can be found...

Classroom Talk: 7/30/2021 - Our greatest gift -- our highest possibility -- may be summarized as follows: not only are we created to give ourselves to what we love, but we are able to discern the difference between an order of Love that sacrifices itself for the sake of something greater than itself, and a kind of love that lives only to give itself what it imagines will make it great.

Classroom Talk: 8/23/2020 - Stop giving unwanted moments your ear, let alone a voice with which to complain about their sting, and soon there will be nothing left to resist... including the pain inherent in talking (to yourself) about how life has done you wrong!