Suffering

Topics covered: Every thought that you have about yourself, and what you should do to improve your place in life, is a waste; You cannot complete the moment without at the same time completing yourself. They are one and the same thing; If you keep repeating the same experience, it means that you have not really learned the lesson that comes with the experience. Spiritual lessons ride in on the back of events...

Student Talks: 8/25/2023 - Key Lesson: Having no real direction of its own in this life... a wandering mind is incapable of recognizing the difference between finding the promise of (another) false purpose to live for, and the pit into which it falls... as it's tempted to reach for the treasure it imagines it has found there.

Topics covered: Between awakening and rebirth there has to be a death. Nothing is born anew that doesn't die to what it was before; Our lives are presently the experience of our own creation; Until we are aware of what dwells in the dark of ourselves, we are subject to whatever that nature does in the absence of that awareness; Imagined security requires an imagined self to keep it in place...

Topic: How to Release Yourself from Any Negative Reaction (Classroom Talk 2/22/23)

Topics covered: The only reason that people hurt others is because they are in pain themselves; Judging another person, even if only in your own mind, is a form of punishing that person; There can be no object without a subject. There can be no sound of a tree falling without someone who hears the sound. There can be no feeling of irritation without someone who feels the irritation.

Classroom Talk: 2/22/2023 - Any form of some painful, or otherwise conflict-filled negative reaction only persists -- as such -- in a world whose creator assists with -- and supports -- the reason for the continuation of that suffering.

Student Talks: 12/16/2022 - Key Lesson: Part 1: There is no solving the mystery of ourselves without having first solved the mystery of (our) pain... which is why so few become self realized, let alone set free. Part 2: The higher purpose of suffering is to ground us in the Existence and Presence of an altogether higher order of (our own) being... where neither passing time, nor its pain holds a claim on us.

Topics covered: Anything that I think that I am, I fear that I am not. Fear is built into identification; The purpose of a true spiritual teaching is to develop the soul individually and collectively at the same time. It is not about "you"; We presently live in a spiritual darkness, and the purpose of spiritual work is to bring light into that darkness, but we have to be willing to allow that light to reveal and enact its Will...

Student Talks: 7/8/2022 - Key Lesson: Part 1: Unattended thoughts attract unwanted relationships. Part 2: Identifying with any painful reaction is a form of negative fascination; it is an inverse form of Narcissism where we feel drawn to "stare" at -- to dwell on -- whatever may be that dark thought or feeling we're so sure we don't want to see. Stranger still, the more we resist...

Topics covered: We say we want to be free of our suffering, but the life we currently live ensures the suffering will continue; Attention is connection, so that you are always connected to what you are attending to. Connection is relationship, which is a form of union between the observer and the observed; Perfect self-command would mean that you could not be overcome by any negative...

Topic: How to Wake Up and Walk Out of Whatever Troubles You (1/5/22 Classroom Talk)

Topics covered: The human being is the source of every mystery there is, and the human being also holds the answer to every one of those mysteries; The mystery of our relationship with God is not solvable by thought; Wars begin with individuals having lost sight of the source of conflict residing within themselves; It is upside-down to believe that the source of your experience...