Sense Of Self

Topics covered:  What we see outside of ourselves as separate objects are connected and never not touching one another. Everything that exists affects everything else; All of creation is in constant labor, because there is never not something being born. Spiritually speaking, we don't generally understand the suffering that is inherent in the labor of birth; Pain is a mistaken love for something small that promises to love you back if you give yourself to it.

Topics covered:  There is something waiting to grow in you that you are responsible for and that requires your attention; There is a difference between a familiar reaction, and our awareness of it; A mirror reflects whatever is before it, no matter what the object is. Neither the mirror nor the object being reflected is aware of each other -- they do not know each other -- but we can be aware of both at the same time.

Sensation is but an echo -- a shadow cast by the Real. It belongs to life, yet it is not Life itself. Mistaking sensation for Life... is like mistaking a shadow for the sun whose light lends it form, and from which it has been cast.

It is a big mistake to believe that negative imagination requires we be present to its calculated organization in order to imprison us in what feels like some fearful, or angry sense of self; quite the opposite is true. Truth be known, our most familiar, if not dominant sense of "I" is thus manufactured, and our identification with the works of this dark machinery is the unseen source of most of our fear and sorrow.

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.

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.

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.

Topics covered: Real power begins to reveal itself when a person starts to realize that there is no need to seek for power as it is imagined; Life presents conditions that prove that the sand castles we have built for ourselves are not real due to how easily they can be washed away; The consciousness is set on ensuring that everything stays in place so that it can continue to look at itself through familiar conditions, and imagine itself as something real and permanent.

Topics covered: Each negative state that we currently act from comes with an incredibly strong sense of self whenever that weakness appears. The real root of the weakness is the identification with the state; We draw a strong sense of self from the very weakness that we say we wish to be from from. There is an addiction to resisting the weakness; There is nothing real that happens when we revisit the past...

Topics covered: There is nothing that you can do in a dream to wake you up from the nightmare of being a human being who is spiritually asleep; Unlike all other creatures, you have been given the gift to be aware of your own consciousness, as opposed to being asleep within it and a captive of its own movements; The mind creates a dark drama and then struggles to find a way to escape from the very scene...

Topics Covered: Worry is not only a lie, but it also steals our life; Life is always creating and revealing at the same time. The very unfolding of creation causes a revelation in us; they are a singularity; We are always in a new relationship with the moment, but we are not aware of that relationship; Our tendency is feel as if we are under attack when we feel pain in any unwanted moment...

Student Talks: 9/11/2020 - Key Lesson: 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...