How many of you know that, on any given day, you will be standing before a wall? Every single day, to one degree or another, a person runs into something like this: "God, I don't want that," "I wish I wasn't feeling this way," "Why are they doing those things they're doing?" "Oh my God, I've put on 5 pounds," "Oh no, look at the economy"... any one of a thousand different ways in which...

Our resolve to live a real life, an awakened life, is strengthened when our self-study reveals that at any moment we're not consciously in command of ourselves, a mechanical nature is in charge of us, directing us to look for someone, something to blame for our pain.

A man is walking through his office when his boss walks by and gives him a blank look. The thought pops into the man's mind that his boss is criticizing him or doesn't like him. Now, as he starts to fear this idea -- a negative picture produced by his imagination -- his mind focuses its attention on this disturbing image. And the more he attends to this dark dream, the further into its labyrin...

Learn to detect negative feelings that imply there's nothing that can be done about the way you feel at the moment.

Before we release ourselves into the hands of any automatically appearing rescuing agent, we must first take it into the light in order to see who sent it.

Dissatisfaction is a psychological storm that every human being experiences. The truth is that dissatisfaction is actually a kind of growing pain, but to our present consciousness, it seems like a curse. We try to put an end to any feeling of dissatisfaction by reinventing ourselves so that we never have to feel that way again. Presently the nature that is dissatisfied sets us out to find som...

Barring those moments when we find ourselves in real physical danger, conditions, of themselves, have absolutely no authority over us. It's true. No event or circumstance has any power to make us feel one way or another. The only command any condition may have over us is that which we unconsciously surrender to it. And what we've given away, we can take back. Insight coupled with action is a...

When a mind is at rest, anything that stirs it is instantly recognized. When we can be awake to what stirs us -- become conscious of what is always pushing us, moving us, drawing us along -- then we have a chance to actually begin to recognize and realize what it would mean to be able to sit in a room and not have our mind pulling on us from a thousand different directions about a thousand dif...

Topic: How to Dismiss Any Fearful Moment Before It Drags You Down (Classroom Talk 9/14/22)

Topics covered: Happiness for human beings now is the momentary abatement of a fear; Worry is an instrument of fear, imagining what needs to be done in a time to come to find freedom from disturbances; Psychological fear does not exist outside of the mind's associations that validate the reality of the thing that is feared; There is no such thing as psychological fear without negative imagination...

Classroom Talk: 9/14/2022 - Freedom cannot be found in the east, or to the west; it doesn't wait somewhere north or south of those who go there in search of it. It's neither here, nor there; freedom is found wherever the willing soul agrees to meet and confront a fear.

Topic: 7 Ways to Recognize False Friends By the Lies They Tell (Classroom Talk 8/31/22)