The momentum of our daily lives can sometimes make it seem like we are on a runaway train. But for those of us who are tired of going nowhere, it is possible to catch ourselves

In finding any true teaching, there is always the chance that we can become wrongly identified with the conceptual ideas in the teaching, so much so that we begin to draw our life just from the ideas alone. But on the other hand, hearing and studying true ideas is a necessary first step because we know that a true teaching contains right ideas that we need to hear. The potential stumbling bloc...

Only God knows why a flower can remain tightly wrapped up as a bud for its entire life, never opening, so that in a way it never fulfills the purpose of its existence. In the same way, only God knows why a human being can spend an entire lifetime closed off from his or her higher possibilities. But if for some reason that individual, regardless of age, has the "impossible" impulse to open in s...

Lock the following statement in your mind and try your best to never forget it: There is no such thing as a failed spiritual warrior who wanders onto the battlefield and is willing to meet what he or she must. Even if that warrior takes only one step before falling down and running away in fear, that warrior does not fail. You gain more in a moment when you are willing to meet what you must t...

You can have consciousness of life. The difference between just living and being aware of the fact that you are real life is so immense that it cannot even be compared. You have to be willing to know that you are alive, as opposed to just thinking about being alive. If you want to know about real life, you have to be willing to be alive, with everything that it entails. Presently we do not tr...

Nothing is set in real life, but we live from a mind-set that wants to get things settled. Just when we think we have everything taken care of -- when all of our ducks are in a row -- life seems to come along and place another demand upon us. In general, we would prefer that nothing interfere with our carefully constructed plans. What is the nature of a mind that is always scrambling to put e...

There is no one problem that a person has that is not the problem of everyone. The bottom line is that the only problem we ever have is that we hurt ourselves. If we had the choice, we would all obviously say that we would like to stop hurting ourselves. But the fact is that we run into problems--run into ourselves--again and again. So what is it that is blocking our wish to stop punishing our...

Student Talks: 10/9/2020 - Key Lesson: Part 1: Any form of (psychological) suffering that looks back into the past for its "cause" -- or to the future, in the hope of some imagined freedom to come -- isn't just useless, it's wasted. Part 2: Here is the real "secret" of starting over: No moment in life can be any newer than we are willing...

Student Talks: 8/21/2020 - Key Lesson: Part 1: The divided mind -- driven as it is by unconscious desires -- is very similar to a dog that has learned to throw its own stick. It cannot come to a rest until it has exhausted itself, and even then it can’t let go of what it feels compelled to chase. Part 2: The cost of starting over spiritually...

Student Talks: 5/1/2020 - Key Lesson: The only thing a thousand failed attempts to start our life over proves is that we just keep trying to start from the wrong place... a thousand times. And this is why we must have true self-knowledge, because the journey to a New Life begins within us or... not at all.