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.

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.

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...

Student Talks: 8/7/2020 - Key Lesson: 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.

Topics Covered: Spiritual life is a ceaseless series of departures; The antidote is in the venom; In my weakness is Thy strength made perfect; The nature that wants to fit in is in a prison; Eliminate the mechanical man or woman, and you eliminate what is maniacal; "Give me liberty or give me death" is a fact of spiritual life; The emptiness we fear doesn't exist without...

Student Talks: 4/17/2020 - Key Lesson: Conscious persistence perfects those who will suffer through the work it takes to discover that discouragement is a lie. Only then is its deception seen for what it is: a lower level of consciousness that wants us to accept its mediocrity as the only possibility.

Student Talks: 3/15/2019 - Key Lesson: The real reason we so quickly summarily resist or reject the suffering of others is because it reminds us of what we're unable to keep buried and out of sight in our own "backyard."