Past

Key Lesson: There are as many memory-paved roads promising a new life as there are old thoughts trying once again to escape the consequences of themselves. The tragedy is that every road built by memory eventually circles back to the same familiar destination, because the traveler has never changed.

Key Lesson: What is past is colorless; neither does it have texture, any taste or odor. To lend any one of these qualities to what is no more is to transform what may be useful now into a prison of painfully pre-determined outcomes.

Student Talks: 04/03/2026 - By itself, no thought has the power to trouble us; its authority over us is equal to the extent we are deceived into identifying with its particular, temporary character.

Topic: Stop Being a Prisoner of the Past (Remastered Classic Talk) (Classroom Talk 10/22/25)

Remastered Classic Talk: 10/26/16 - What is True is always new, ceaselessly original... and to realize its innocence, to share in its inexhaustible power and spontaneity, we too must be original.

Student Talks: 8/29/2025 - Rushing somewhere, through anything, in the hope of finding some imagined peace of mind is like looking for your heart in someone else's body!

Topics covered:  "Part of the miracle of true beauty is that you are not separate from it when you see and experience it; We see our mind's explanations of what is taking place. As such, we do not see the whole;  Each center belongs to yet another center. Whatever the center is of the moment, it cannot be personal. But for us presently, everything is taken personally."

Topic: Learn to See and to Step Out of the "Same Old Self" (Remastered Classic Talk)(Classroom Talk 6/11/25)

Topics covered:  "You do not see at all, but you think you see. You are identified with every thought that passes by, and the sense of self that comes with it;  Anything that you imagine, and then identify with, has no life in it at all; It is impossible to have a lingering negative reaction unless, in the moment of the reaction, you have met a moment like that before."