A Visit to Life of Learning...

Our work is to consistently take pictures of ourselves, to be able to step outside the stream of the mechanical, comfort-seeking, falsely-contented self so that we can start to see ourselves as we are, and not as we imagine ourselves to be.

Most of us like sitting by a river and watching the water or anything else come downstream and then disappear in the distance. When watching a river, we don't usually focus on one thing in the stream and then resist it as it floats by. We are intended to be the observer of the stream of our interior life in much the same way that we would enjoy watching a river.

Classroom Talk: 2/14/2024 - Part 1: The witness to experience is not bound by it. Part 2: It's impossible to enjoy any moment in life, while fearfully trying to control it at the same time... that is, unless your idea of pleasure is the pain of making impossible demands on "others," not to mention upon yourself.

Classroom Talk: 10/11/2023 - Part 1: We can't hope to change what comes out of any given moment until we change the one within whom it appears. Part 2: The task is not to be perfect as imagined, an illusion supported by the pain of unrelenting self-judgment; rather the real task is to do the interior work of seeing ourselves as perfectly as we can regardless of how much we would rather not.

Classroom Talk: 4/26/2023 - Praying to change the world around us is pointless until we see that the world around us is the way it is because we are the way we are; only in the realization of this truth -- and in our agreement to make the sacrifices inherent in its revelation -- is there hope for the world, and for us, as well.

Classroom Talk: 3/8/2023 - Only in a world turned upside-down could someone actually believe that his daily dose of stress, anxiety, and despair somehow proves he is as special as he imagines himself to be.

Classroom Talk: 5/25/2022 - It is impossible to resist a revelation, and serve its Divine purpose at the same time.

Classroom Talk: 2/2/2022 - Any part of us that wants to give us a good reason why we are stuck somewhere in life is secretly a partner in that pain it first protests, and then seems to resist. To see the truth of this insight sets the stage for how to never feel stuck again.

Topics Covered: The wave is a momentary expression of something much greater; We would not be able to experience movement without the presence of stillness through which it moves; Movement and stillness are not apart from each other, they are a unity; Seeing is coming into a relationship with a being within which everything already awaits; Identification is blindness...

Classroom Talk: 11/17/2019 - Part 1: Unconscious negative reactions feel intelligent because they are inseparable from some equally unconscious judgment that lends them their temporary "life." So that, in this manner, the more stress, anger, or pain we feel -- born of having identified with one of these dark reactions...