Sense Of Self

Student Talks: 11/22/2024 - Key Lesson: Real self-change begins with seeing that Real Life is change itself.

Topic: In Search of a Truth that Reveals and Releases Us from the Prison of Time (Classroom Talk 9/11/24)

Topics covered:  The endless stream of thought produces a ceaseless sense of self, each one as temporary as the thought. The sense of self disappears as soon as the wave that created that sense of self disappears; "The roaring of lions, the howling of wolves, the raging of the stormy sea, and the destructive sword, are portions of eternity too great for the eye of man. " -- William Blake; There is a higher order of being that is unchanging, even as everything within it changes.

Topic: An Advanced Lesson in Letting Go of Any Past Painful Moment (Classroom Talk 8/21/24)

Student Talks: 7/12/2024 - Key Lesson: Believing that avoiding the experience of an unwanted, or otherwise unknown moment is the same as freedom from the fear of it is like being lost in the African bush, crossing paths with a hungry lion, and hoping that if you just look the other way... it will too!

Topics covered: Presently our lives are much more about the avoidance of life rather than the fulfillment of its  possibilities. That consciousness cultivates pleasures and avoids pain: We avoid running into anything that we don't presently understand: Something inside of us that is more than just the physical body wants to go beyond the physical, to understand more about the whole of life: Spiritual development is voluntary...

Topics covered: A poet could write for decades about an impression, yet still not come close to the totality of the revelation; You are like the fish in the ocean seeking the water. You are already within what you long for; The more you give your attention to something, the more you discover about yourself through that relationship; The Vine is infinite relative to the branch, and the branch is infinite relative to the fruit.

Topics covered: When does the world change? When you change the way you see the world; The blessed ones through the ages have tried to convey the idea that you need new eyes to see what is in front of you all the time but that you don’t currently see. And the reason you don’t see is because the impressions that are intended to produce a real change are deflected by all kinds of buffers — beliefs, conditions, longings.

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.

Anytime you feel the need to stand in the healing Light of the Divine -- and then act to honor that wish -- you will realize a miracle: you'll see that you are already in it.

Student Talks: 1/19/2024 - Key Lesson: The greatest possibility for acquiring the Divine energy required to facilitate the transformation of oneself is found only in the moments of higher awareness that, itself, can only be realized in the same time and place of one's greatest resistance to that moment.

Topics covered: It is wise to seek immortality because time defeats all other ambitions; The greatest prize hidden within our inner life is victory over death. Uncovering the treasure is a matter not of intellectual knowledge only, but of awareness, relationship, participation and understanding; The desert in spiritual stories represents the endless useless struggle to escape from conflict, not seeing that the attempt to escape is the perpetuation of the conflict.