Persistence / Adversity

Remastered Classic Talk: 6/7/17 - There are two good things about a constant, strong wind in one's face: first, how resilient one's legs become, the stamina that's developed by walking directly into a gale force. The other good thing is this: when the winds change direction which, by law, they always do -- so that now the wind is at one's back -- one sprints forward with great ease, but it feels as if one is walking.

Remastered Classic Talk: 1/18/17 - Action without knowledge is reckless at best, and is almost always dangerous to everyone involved. Knowledge without action is useless at best, and guarantees that the individual who is "inclined to recline" will remain in the realm of the sleeping intellect.

Being in conscious relationship with what is Holy in life is only as possible as we are willing to see, and to be, accordingly, the whole of who and what we are in each moment.

Student Talks: 11/08/2024 - Key Lesson: Persistence – without our awareness of the parts of us that steadily insist there’s no further we can go – is a recipe for frustration; this painful sense of self slowly morphs from simple despair into an unholy cynicism that, in turn, serves to confirm what we see as our own unwanted, but unavoidable conclusion: we’ve no other choice but to give up our wish to transcend whatever limitation we’d been called to outgrow.

Student Talks: 8/16/2024 - Key Lesson: Part 1: Conscious persistence transforms unconscious resistance into Revelation. Part 2: Faith is the awareness of some yet realized higher possibility, and persistence is the act of proving its existence despite the difficulties along the way.

One of the hardest things to understand about the true spiritual path, and the struggles along the Way, is that the inner struggle we fear losing has already been won for us... if we will only (remember to) take our rightful place in the midst of that engagement...

Even if your best efforts - the work to be awake, and attentive to your inner life - feels as if it's failed to produce any real result... nevertheless, persist: one day a Light that is in exact proportion to your labor will flood the soul, filling it with New Life.

We are not being called to be more than we are, let alone to judge ourselves when we see we have missed the mark; rather, we are here to discover ALL that we are being given, and how - if we dare accept this unimaginable gift - we will see it multiplied a hundredfold.

Topics covered: New Year's resolutions always revolve around wanting to keep the so-called "good" parts of what I call "me," and not-wanting what I call the "bad" parts; If you want to have a new life, you cannot bring old wants along with you; There is an innate longing to be in relationship with what cannot be expressed in words; True spiritual teachings are not recognizable by the consciousness that has faith only in things seen...

Student Talks: 12/18/2020 - Key Lesson: Part 1: The Divine journey begins with our gradual awakening to the timeless depth and breadth of our own sleeping consciousness. All that we are, and hope to be already resides therein... waiting to reveal its Light to whoever will dare make the leap into the seeming darkness...

Topics Covered:There is an impulse to set out upon the "Divine Journey" because the journey(s) we take in this world are the source of dissatisfaction;There is alignment with the Divine, or there is the illusion of alignment;All creatures have consciousness and are aware of their surroundings, and that level of consciousness sees everything as being other than itself...

Topics Covered:The "self" that sets out on the journey to reconnect with the Divine will not be the same self that finally arrives; The very act of attempting to escape from unwanted moments is the creation of a painful circle of self that attempts to, but cannot escape itself; The "consciousness of otherness" that was referred to in the talk is the divided level of mind that believes...