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.

Classroom Talk: 11/03/2024 - 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.

Classroom Talk: 8/11/2024 - Conscious persistence transforms unconscious resistance into Revelation.

Classroom Talk: 12/31/2023 - Just as the eyes that see the sun cannot understand its light by which they behold the shape and beauty of all things, neither can the heart understand the love that calls it to know and embrace all things. Eye and heart are creatures in time, but Light and Love are not. Even so, they meet; in their union is the mystery, miracle, and fulfillment of our yet realized Divine possibility.

Classroom Talk: 12/13/2020 - 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 of its perfect emptiness...

Classroom Talk: 12/11/2020 - If we will persist, at all costs, with our interior work -- immersing ourselves in its ensuing, ever-deepening discoveries -- the glad day comes when we will simply melt into them... proving that we are neither the one who seeks truth, nor the one who finds it, but a level of Being that is, and always has been... both.

Classroom Talk: 8/2/2020 - Here's why no spiritual "secret" -- in and of itself -- has the power to transform, let alone raise our consciousness in any meaningful way: no self-knowledge, regardless how subtle, can serve its true purpose unless it is accompanied by the one element capable of actualizing it: consistent, persistent self-honesty.

Classroom Talk: 6/28/2020 - Part 1: The futility and inevitable frustration of trying to "fit" the Immeasurable into our present level of consciousness is like spending a day at the sea shore, and then hoping to take the ocean home with us... in our sand pail. Part 2: We live in a world the size of our present understanding...

Classroom Talk: 6/24/2020 - Two angels were working together in Heaven's kitchen, each preparing a special loaf of bread that -- when all said and done -- was destined to become part of the Bread of Life. As such, when came the right time, their light-giving nourishment would be shared with some spiritually receptive human being...

Classroom Talk: 5/20/2020 - Whether to resist a challenging, unwanted moment, or to persist with our wish to transcend whatever limitation it reveals in us... that is the question! But to be clear, which of these two possibilities flowers into a greater power all depends on the one that we choose to nourish and grow.