Pretense

Many of us have come to believe that being a good performer in life is somehow the same as fulfilling the purpose of life. Here's the strange logic behind the self-created misery that follows it: For each successful "performance" we pull off around others or within ourselves, it feels as if we've won, for the moment, what we've imagined will make us whole and happy -- but the drawback here...

Any time we feign anything, we do so out of fear that without that "persona" to protect us--to make that impression we want--we won't get what we want. This whole way of thinking is secret self-sabotage. Your consideration of the two special insights that follow will start you down the path to a whole new kind of self-command.

Remastered Classic Talk: 12/07/16 - Human arrogance -- its entire dark and painful pretense -- exists only as it does because of how distanced we've become from the immense and Divine mystery of our own being. The more we awaken to the depth of this mystery, the more we see our life through the eyes of a whole new level of being endowed with a natural, yet supernal humility.

Topic: Go Beyond Worldly Appearances to Real Spiritual Substance (Remastered Classic Talk) (Classroom Talk 9/3/25)

Topic: Enact This New Knowledge and Enter Into Real Freedom (Remastered Classic Talk)(Classroom Talk 4/30/25)

Student Talks: 8/20/2021 - Key Lesson: Part 1: A rose doesn't "try" to be beautiful; it never struggles to win one's attention, or to prove its value. Any part of us -- pressing on us to try and make a favorable impression -- of any kind, upon anyone for any reason -- is a form of useless suffering born of trying to escape the fear of being seen as "no one."

Student Talks: 11/8/2019 - Key Lesson: Pretending -- to yourself, or around others -- that "all is well" is the unseen hell of the false self. On the other hand, the realization that all unfolds -- moment to moment -- in the only way that it can is not only the first step in awakening from this lower level of consciousness...

Topic: Cancel Your Membership to "Club Me" (4/14/19 Classroom Talk)

Topic: Cancel Your Membership to "Club Me" (4/14/19 Classroom Talk)

Classroom Talk: 11/11/2018 - Featured Study Group Topic for the Week of November 19, 2018. Anyone who rushes through life always finishes last! This is a truth unseen by the masses, but evident to those weary of going nowhere fast. You race as you do to escape the unhappiness you feel being where you are, running toward what you imagine will free you from that dissatisfaction. But such races are always lost before they be...

Featured Study Group Topic for the Week of May 28, 2018. It is from out of one's unconscious fear of death that comes the frustration, pain, and inevitable sense of regret born of trying to steal a feeling of being alive.