Student Talks: 10/27/2023 - Key Lesson: Any time the mind makes a "package" out of some unwanted moment -- wrapping its reaction (to it) in familiar troubled thoughts, and negative feelings -- it does so at the cost of exchanging a priceless gift it's been given... in favor of giving itself another painful experience (of itself) that it doesn't know it's created for itself!

Topics covered: As goes my attention, so comes my experience. As comes my experience, so comes my sense of self. If my sense of self has fallen into what I don't want, then I AM what I don't want; Negative reactions kill all other possibilities. Negative reactions collapse one's experience into a very limited field; "Divinity is our birthright. God nods to God from behind each of us. But let us remember, divinity is behind our failures and follies also"...

Topic: Set Down Your Struggles and Be... Free (Classroom Talk 9/27/23)

Topics covered: The meaning of the passage "Sell all and follow me" pertains to selling the psychological possessions of your past and your future; The hope in a time to come in which you will be free is the very prison you are in now; If you complete the moment, then you complete yourself. If you don't complete the moment, then you are tied to an incomplete nature seeking to complete itself in a time to come...

Classroom Talk: 9/27/2023 - You can't learn how to be; it's impossible. But you can see through the futility of the endless struggle to make yourself (feel) real. So, yes: it's hard to die to the hope that some time yet to come holds the key, but it does get easier the more you realize that whatever freedom you've imagined... doesn't exist without the fear that it doesn't.

Topic: Enter the Perfect Protection of the Presence Moment (Classroom Talk 8/30/23)

Topics covered: "It is wise to seek immortality because time defeats all other ambitions." -- Vernon Howard; The attempt to avoid suffering is an ambition. The attempt to avoid the experience of yourself is an ambition; Our daily wishes are rooted in the imagination of a time to come in which we will not be in the pain that we are in now; What human beings presently call "freedom" involves a time to come...

Classroom Talk: 8/30/2023 - Part 1: Whatever is created in time... is a creation of time; and all creations -- in, and of time -- must pass when their time is up. Part 2: If we ever look closely, we would see that the fear we have of the future is always dressed as a beggar; but if we dared even a closer look, we'd see that not only does that beggar bear a striking resemblance to us...

Topic: Heal the Pain of the Past in the Here and Now (Classroom Talk 6/14/23)

Topics covered: When you blame anything outside of yourself for the pain you are in, you are essentially blaming something from the past, a consciousness that is haunted by the content of itself; The future consolation that you hope to reach is a projection of the past; Even though a moment may seem familiar to the mind that is analyzing it, every single moment of your life is the first time that you have been in it.

Classroom Talk: 6/14/2023 - The higher purpose of suffering is to ground us in the existence and Presence of an altogether higher level of (our own) Being... where neither time, nor the pain it harbors holds a claim on us. Discovering there's a choice like this transforms any moment of feeling lost, confused, or resentful into the possibility of realizing it as the new and higher opportunity it represents.

Topic: Walk Away from Anxious Thoughts and Feelings Before They Work You Over! (Classroom Talk 5/24/23)