Renewal

The purpose of true spiritual study is to begin a very slow and steady process by which the human mind that is willing to be educated is brought into the presence of new understanding. This new understanding is not something that you can give to yourself, but it must start with certain ideas that are intended to come between you and your present suffering. Presently our suffering feeds on itse...

I can think of no greater encouragement in this life than the self-evident truth that within each of us dwells something Extraordinary. By "Extraordinary" I don't mean any one condition or sensation born of a particularly exciting experience or even the long-awaited realization of some special achievement. The meaning of Extraordinary I wish to convey goes far beyond all such isolated crowni...

The wish itself -- to be a higher person -- comes to you from a higher place and is received in its inner equivalent within you. This means there's already an existing connection between the you that you want to be and the you that you presently are; between the new destiny you would have, and the fortunes you've known. All you have to do is stay on the royal road that has brought you up to th...

The only way a man or woman will ever know a life without conflict is when they see the Love behind everything that happens -- not by imagination, but through direct participation, recognition. There is never a moment that God's will isn't actually pouring down on us in one shape or form of energy or another. It is never not taking place, which means that we can always be in alignment with a g...

It always amazes me on sun-bright mornings such as this one how I could have ever forgotten just how much beauty hides in a winter day. The ground is covered in rich brown tones borrowed from curling leaves. Here and there pop up patches of fall-parched grasses just greening, reborn from early rains. And, more than anything else, the stark trees of winter stand like nature's exclamation points...

Light transforms whatever it touches. The light of awareness acts on our essence and changes us according to Its wishes.

Topics covered: We are meant to be renewed again and again, in every single moment; We don't know that we meet every moment of life with some kind of demand; The reason that we miss the moment where renewal is taking place, where rebirth is given to us, is because we all live with demands that we don't know we live with; You're not free just because you can say we're free.You're free when you live in a nature that gives you that freedom.

Topics covered:  If the Kingdom of Heaven is within, then there is no distance between you and the Kingdom, and it takes no time to get there. Whatever is keeping you from knowing that must be something that sits outside of the Kingdom; It is impossible to resist "what is" without there being within us some unseen presence of a fixed position that is already in place. There cannot be a struggle with "what is" without the presence of something that is fixed.

Topics covered:  Within us already lives a nature that does not have to resolve problems because it is problem-free to begin with; True teachings are intended to awaken a new kind of effort in us, and to expose the wrong kind of effort; Doing is downstream from being, and sorrow is the inevitable result of living from a nature that is out of order, and not in harmony with the broader life.

Student Talks: 1/10/2025 - It's not the unwanted moment that limits our possibilities, but rather that we meet it from a limited part of us; where, without our knowing it, an unconscious nature has already decided not just the meaning of that event, but what we can -- or cannot -- do about it; where our choices in each moment are predetermined by our conditioned reaction to it.

Topic: Enter the Unseen Temple of the Indwelling Divine (Classroom Talk 1/3/24)