Spiritual Growth

Almost every day I receive a letter, an e-mail, or phone call from an aspirant who wants to know, essentially, the following: "What must I do to succeed spiritually?" Or, in a slight variation on that theme: "What's the right way to do what I must in order to awaken?"

Letting go and spiritual growth are as rain is to a field of wildflowers: we blossom as beings only as we release ourselves from what is self-limiting. But why do this kind of work within ourselves? Even though it's obvious, it needs to be stated: we struggle with whatever we do -- with whatever personally compromises us or our contentment in life -- so that we might realize a greater...

Any true self-aware state must include the presence of a humility that tempers the temptation inherent in all forms of self-evaluation; otherwise, what we might call self-awakening is really just a form of secret self-admiration.

There are so many things for a person to love, but if we ever want to be what it is that we say we want to be, then we must have one love. It is the extent to which we love -- and the degree to which we make the appropriate sacrifices for that love -- that the very thing we love rewards us with the relationship we long for.

Student Talks: 12/22/2023 - Key Lesson: Every once in a while, we have the great fortune of perceiving a moment of such astonishing beauty, or harmony, that we all but lose ourselves within it. But what is far more amazing than any such vision is this breathtaking fact: were it not for our mysterious capacity to perfectly reflect that moment -- to be one with it in heart, mind, and soul -- there would be no beauty or harmony to behold.

Topic: Welcome This Healing Truth and Outgrow Whatever Troubles You in Life (Classroom Talk 9/13/23)

Topics covered: You are relieved from the false responsibility of trying to fix yourself or others when you understand the true root and meaning of the disturbance; The problem is not what you see in the mirror. The problem is that there is something in you that believes that what you see should not be there; Truly outgrowing something is not the same as imagining some other new identity to grow into...

Classroom Talk: 9/13/2023 - Trying to change any unwanted condition without first awakening to, and then realizing the nature of the consciousness responsible for creating it... is like blaming a mirror for what you don't like seeing (in it).

Topic: The Cost of Spiritual Freedom (Classroom Talk 11/23/22)

Topics covered: There will never be anything that we ever discover that was not already waiting in our consciousness to be revealed; Everything that is waiting to be discovered was made to be discovered; Whenever you have an impression of any kind, what you are really experiencing is your own consciousness; Part of boredom is the belief that one has already experienced every impression that is possible...

Classroom Talk: 11/23/2022 - No one has freedom of speech who -- for fear of being isolated, cast out and left alone -- feels unable to speak the truth they would, or to question what they see as false. And how much more so does the above hold true when it comes to the freedom to see oneself as one is... without endless self-judgment, and all of its painful justification...

Topic: The Lost Keys to Conscious Self-Transformation (Classroom Talk 10/12/22)