Strength

Remastered Classic Talk: 11/4/15 - Here is the obvious, but rarely acknowledged reason why we must dig in and do the difficult inner work needed for real self-transformation: if we don't change, we gradually come to wholly embody the very weaknesses whose destructive nature we wish weren't (living) within us. The courage to see the truth of this inevitable outcome gives us the reason, the will and the courage we need to succeed in our quest to regain command over our own heart, mind, and soul.

Remastered Classic Talk: 12/07/16 - Human arrogance -- its entire dark and painful pretense -- exists only as it does because of how distanced we've become from the immense and Divine mystery of our own being. The more we awaken to the depth of this mystery, the more we see our life through the eyes of a whole new level of being endowed with a natural, yet supernal humility.

Remastered Classic Talk: 05/25/16 - There is no right wrong emotion; there is no true false feeling; there is no positive negative state: End of story. To begin seeing this spiritual truth is the first step in walking away from -- and then dying to -- a lower level of self; the part of us that doesn't care what it feels... only that it has some kind of emotion with which it can be identified.

The best possible response to any given moment should be as new (to us) as is the appearance of that new moment itself.

Student Talks: 11/08/2024 - Key Lesson: Persistence – without our awareness of the parts of us that steadily insist there’s no further we can go – is a recipe for frustration; this painful sense of self slowly morphs from simple despair into an unholy cynicism that, in turn, serves to confirm what we see as our own unwanted, but unavoidable conclusion: we’ve no other choice but to give up our wish to transcend whatever limitation we’d been called to outgrow.

Classroom Talk: 9/11/2024 - For anyone with ears to hear, there is but one question and one answer: will we wait patiently for a single moment of relationship with what is eternal and real? Where - by the ineffable touch of something as unknowable as it is timeless - all the moments of our life - past, present, and future - are forever changed? Otherwise, we waste the precious few moments of our life chasing the pleasure of an imagined time to come that recedes from our grasp in the same instant that we reach for it.

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: 4/17/2024 - Part 1: Fear of any weakness is a part of the weakness feared. Part 2: The more we try to forget our weaknesses, the stronger they become.

Topic: Transform Any Weakness into True Spiritual Strength (Classroom Talk 11/8/23)

Topics covered: Each time a different sense of self comes to the forefront, that self cannot remember that it is reliving the same old experience of itself, all the while believing that they are new experiences; When there is no awareness, your identity is inseparable from the quality of the reaction that is going through you. Your sense of self is determined by any reaction that becomes your guide...

Classroom Talk: 11/8/2023 - Much as a stalking tiger uses woodland shadows to hide its intention from its intended prey, so does (our) weakness hide behind the (momentary) strength of any negative reaction we become identified with... even as it consumes us.

Student Talks: 10/20/2023 - Key Lesson: When the truth is seen... Words, ideas, ambitions, even lofty aspirations are recognized as blindfolds. Why wait to see?