Classroom Talk: 3/6/2022 - Coming to realize any limitation in our consciousness is not the denial of our passage into and through whatever may be the next stage of our inner development; all such revelations along the Way are, in fact, the threshold of an invisible door that -- if we will but dare to stand there -- knocking on it -- never fails to open, revealing a secret entrance into...

Classroom Talk: 1/30/2022 - Painful reactions are born of an unseen resistance (to life). This means our suffering isn't created by the situation blamed for it, rather it is the negative effect of identifying with a lower level of consciousness that clings to this painful, mistaken belief: the first thing to do when having to deal with any unwanted moment... is to not want it!

Classroom Talk: 4/18/2021 - Being able to realize, and then release one's resistance to any unwanted moment does more than help to change the "dark tide" of that event; it reveals that within us already dwell the untroubled "waters" of a celestial harbor: the timeless shelter of an eternal Self that becomes the same as our own...

Classroom Talk: 9/6/2020 - Whenever we are taken over by a negative state -- and remain identified with our resistance to it -- we may not know it, but in these moments... we are as good as "dead." Yes, it feels like we're alive, but this powerful sense of self is really just the presence of our (own) painful resistance to what that moment came to reveal...

Classroom Talk: 8/23/2020 - Stop giving unwanted moments your ear, let alone a voice with which to complain about their sting, and soon there will be nothing left to resist... including the pain inherent in talking (to yourself) about how life has done you wrong!

Classroom Talk: 2/5/2020 -Part 1: Effortless contentment appears as unconscious resistance -- along with its "partner in conflict" -- involuntary insistence, disappears. Part 2: Spiritual freedom is not found by avoiding what disturbs us, but rather by the deliberate interior work of illuminating whatever still dwells in the dark of us that is...

Classroom Talk: 4/24/2019 The more we resist -- and suffer over -- any moment that proves we don't possess the strength we imagine ourselves as having -- the further removed we are from recognizing the real healing lesson these moments bring with them: the realization that the source of this suffering -- over our alleged "weakness"...

Classroom Talk: 3/27/2019 - Untouched, uncorrupted by what once was, and yet unfolding from it -- as does a new blossom from its bud -- comes forth the ever-present moment. But (such) newness holds no familiar pleasure for a mind locked in time: where its struggle to be free unfolds in self-spun captivity, an unwitting but...

Classroom Talk: 2/13/2019 - Part 1: Any “good” reason we have for why some weakness lives on in our character is inseparable from the unconscious level of self that offers it (to us). This means any time we feel compelled to justify our actions – and agree to do so – we’re complicit in the continuation of that weakness excused. Our inner task is to see these...

We may pity the hamster on its wheel in a cage, perhaps even feeling superior to such a clueless creature that keeps running in the same place, going nowhere with no clue of its captive state. But the fact is -- and may God help us to see it as so -- there is little difference between this hamster wheel and the "wheel" of negative thoughts and feelings that, on one hand, tell us how to escape...

Looking for the meaning of any experience by taking thought about it is like focusing your attention on the single thread of a magnificent tapestry and hoping to understand the story it tells by analyzing that one thread. The story is so much bigger than that and... so is your true Self.

There's only one way to stop being deceived by the empty promises of others -- including those produced from out of your own desires... And that is to know that nothing promised to you -- or by anyone -- has the power to "add one cubit to your stature."...