Sense Of Self

Topics covered: Real existence is being rooted in an awareness that doesn't pursue anything because it is already a part of everything; There is no addiction that doesn't begin with a sense of self that feels incomplete; In order to win the approval of others, we have to sell ourselves. Our sense of self is dependent upon exterior conditions; There is no fear without the fear of disappearing, without the fear of losing myself...

Remastered Classic Talk: 5/17/17 - 

Part 1: We are told that life is everlasting -- but see that nothing lasts! We are taught there is no death, and yet we see it everywhere around us! We dwell in the middle of an immense contradiction wherein one part of us feels the possibility of a life eternal, but that sees, and fears -- in the same moment -- only the inevitability of the opposite.

Part 2: The Great and Timeless Teaching -- that which can't be taught -- can only be learned through humility.

Remastered Classic Talk: 11/30/16 - The compulsive "need" to be constantly on the move -- ceaselessly occupied, either outwardly -- or inwardly, in some useless consideration -- is how the lower nature fills itself with the nothingness it needs to keep itself from seeing its own emptiness.

Remastered Classic Talk: 8/17/16 - Part 1: You can neither control, nor change any anxious thought or emotion that rushes in and sweeps you off of your feet because this "I" -- this sense of yourself suddenly in a struggle to escape a psychological storm -- is itself a part of the squall it now so vigorously resists.

Part 2: Every thought, a blockage. Every emotion, a limitation. Every movement, a hindrance to Thee.

Remastered Classic Talk: 06/01/16 - 

Emergency! Then urgency!
Oh my... such an important me.
In this blindness, it's unkindness
Too late I see... the insensitivity
Of unseen self-captivity.

Classroom Talk: 4/10/2024 - It's impossible to see, let alone walk the indefinable path of the presence moment until we realize we've been deceived into looking at virtually every moment of life through the 'I's of the past.

Classroom Talk: 11/22/2023 - The "importance" of any given moment is inseparable from whatever may be the momentary sense of "self" responsible for lending it that significance. If we are to have any hope of realizing what is actually important in this life -- which is to see through the illusion of a separate self -- then we must be honest enough to admit the following truth: What really makes one moment seem more important than any other...

Classroom Talk: 5/3/2023 - There is no thought, no memory from the past that of itself can cause us pain; the only reason we suffer for their appearance is because we don't want to relive the unwanted experience they remind us of... not to mention how -- for our resistance to that same recollection -- we become its unwitting captive.

Classroom Talk: 2/15/2023 - Intention without conviction is like a tree with shallow roots; it is easily up-ended, and ends up bearing no fruit.

Classroom Talk: 9/28/2022 - Any lingering form of painful psychological resistance to some unwanted experience of life is the unconscious rejection of spiritual atonement.

Classroom Talk: 10/7/2020 - The only thing that worrying does is waste the time and energy we need to shed light on a painful sense of self that exists only for as long as it has something to worry over.