Shocks

What happens when we see things about ourselves that we don't want to see? In order to avoid looking at itself, the mind will seize on the anger, impatience, grief, loneliness, or anxiety it has seen... and it will try to explain it. It will take the initial darkness, the negative energy, and because it seems to be so bad, the mind will make something out of it that it can deal with...

Student Talks: 10/03/2025 - 

Life gives. 

Life asks.

And when, at last, 

We are willing 

To surrender whatever

Life may ask of us,

Excluding nothing –

Let alone our most 

Familiar sense of self –

Then, for having died 

To the fear of death 

We are set free.

Topics covered:  "We would not be interested in true interior Work unless somehow, on a daily basis, we lived with an unrequited Love. The capacity to know this Love is already seeded within us; The consciousness that we call "Christ" is the light that dwells within the darkness that the darkness cannot comprehend. The Christ is a living awareness."

Student Talks: 1/27/2023 - Key Lesson: As long we find value in being identified with anything, we remain the captive of an unconscious nature that not only never stops longing for what it imagines will make it secure, but that also consents to suffer over its inability to satisfy its own insatiable desire.

Student Talks: 5/27/2022 - Key Lesson: Part 1 – That we should search only our own conscience for confirmation of what is good and true, this is the best definition of integrity. For that which is good and true is not social in nature, but spiritual in need and in deed. Part 2: Here is an enigma wrapped in a paradox: we cannot buy the love of the Divine; no good deed can produce the Presence...

Topic: Free Yourself From the Fear of Empty Moments (3/22/20 Classroom Talk)

Topic: Free Yourself From the Fear of Empty Moments (3/22/20 Classroom Talk)

Topic: Free Yourself From the Fear of Empty Moments (3/22/20 Classroom Talk)

Classroom Talk: 3/22/2020 - A brief, but important glimpse into the truth behind the idea of "spiritual" poverty: only from nothing can God make us into something new.

Featured Study Group Topic for the Week of March 12, 2018. When it comes to our wish to make real changes in ourselves, good intentions cost (us) nothing...and that's why the road to hell is paved with useless coins. On the other hand, making a conscious effort to change -- in the moment that calls for it -- comes with the cost of seeing ourselves as we really are...