Strength

When this sensory mind of ours perceives life, it mistakenly sees things as happening to it from the outside in. How does this error in perception affect us? It means that we perceive life as a series of things coming at us. Everything about us is oriented outwardly, and it appears to us that our lives are being determined from the outside in.

Within each of us lives a tireless, latent longing to touch -- and be touched by -- life's invisible celestial forces. For instance, whenever we stand as a silent witness to the endless expanse of a dark night sky, we are inwardly moved by this outer display of timelessness spread out above us...

No moment can be different than it is. We can't change a moment that comes. The moment (and its content) appears from within us, before us, and we are relegated to being able to see it but not to change the very thing that we're looking at as it appears. So that whether we like it or not actually means nothing.

We've all had moments where, by a glimpse of conscience, we suddenly recognize, "I am being prodded; pushed to respond with a reaction in the same way I've always been... but I have experienced the outcome, the karma of expressing that negativity, and God help me, I know I cannot do it again!"

There is a nature inside of us -- a product of this world physically and psychologically -- that does not want to change. In fact, it is hell-bent on having everything remain the same so that it can complain about the same things again and again. This unconscious nature is a product of our world physically and psychologically. It's almost like a wrapping -- much like a seed is encased...

Have you ever wondered why – with so many people talking about the need to make real changes in their lives – so very little actually changes? It's pretty obvious: Addiction, dependency, and the conflict and fear they breed, are more prevalent and problematic than ever before, even if made to appear otherwise by popular justification. But what isn't so obvious is the reason...

Power -- who has it and who doesn't -- seems to determine who pushes and who gets shoved in this world. And given our preference, if we must choose one, we would rather be doing the pushing. The only problem is that on the level of this field of choices, whether to push or be pushed, everyone loses because push always comes to shove...

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.