Selfishness / Self-Love

All of us know what it's like to be dogged by parts of us that want to drag us down. Call it what you will: some compulsion or obsession seems to follow us into all our relationships, only to wreck them in one way or another. We struggle as best we can to free ourselves from these dark states but invariably find ourselves short of the mark.

Imagine for a moment you're driving home from work, or wherever, and that you've just come from having a pretty rough day. As you drive along, your eyes see the road before you, but your mind is in the past. It's very busy re-running all of the day's unpleasant events.

Every human being is different and unique. It's one of the greatest mysteries that there is no end to the ways in which the Divine manifests itself through its creations. Every last element of each creation expresses a different character and quality of the Divine as it is acted upon by the Divine.

Topics covered:  "Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might; for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest." -- Ecclesiastes, Old Testament; Any sort of development requires a certain amount of voluntary suffering. The path of development requires that you meet limitations; We will go through great pains to make sure that we get what we want. But there is another kind of pain that we don't usually want: seeing the truth of our present nature.

Topics covered:  Most of us don't know anything at all about our obsessions. When a person is obsessed with something, he or she sees it as natural and necessary; Life is intended to be simple. Everything that is perceived as being difficult is, in reality, simple for the level of understanding that sees from a higher perspective; The Kingdom of Heaven is within. It is not out there in the world of thought and its temporary creations.

Key Lesson: We cannot see what we will not look at... but it is not "us" who refuses to look.

Topics covered:  We give more attention and care to the practical affairs of life than we give to our inner life. Nothing is more serious or more important than attending to your interior life; The punchline of the story about the twins who would inherit their Father's Kingdom was: "Freedom without service is an illusion. The great, sacred law is that whenever you are asked to place the needs of the kingdom above your own, you must do so regardless of the personal cost."

Topics covered: There are parts of us that do not want anything to do with the truth of things; Why is it that human beings have not known what to do with their suffering for all this time? Human beings are the captive of a suffering that they do not understand; Regardless of how conditions have changed as a result of our ability to change them with technology, etc., we are all still absolute captives of the suffering we don't understand...

Topics covered: The only times that you get upset in your life is when your psychological routine is disrupted; The acronym "ERAMS" from the doctor story stands for "Everything Revolves Around Me Syndrome"; Our addictions, whether physical or psychological, begin with the thought that the addictive routine will release us from the feeling of being unbalanced. Identification with the object of the addiction...