Suffering

The end of suffering is not found in the pursuit of freedom from suffering, but in seeing through the very nature of desire that generates the suffering to begin with. The problem is not what we desire, but the identification with desire itself, and the endless cycle of division it creates.

Topics covered:  What you call "your love" is sustained only as long as conditions seem to support that love. As soon as conditions change, what you called "love" is replaced with disdain, anxiety, fear, resentment, and hate; Take the fragments of Truth that you hear into your heart, and that Truth will lead you to the next Truth; When you dwell on an image, even an image of the Divine, you are without knowing it dwelling on the love of yourself.

Student Talks: 3/21/2025 - It may be said that one finds freedom from suffering over oneself in direct proportion to one's realization that there is no separate self whose suffering is to be resisted.

Remastered Classic Talk: 12/30/15 - The whole idea of wanting "more" cannot be separated from the idea that one doesn't have "enough." Seen properly -- unmistakably evident in this revelation -- is that one's lifelong pursuit of "more" is, in fact, spent in the service of an incomplete, constantly needy nature that, at best, can only be momentarily satisfied.

Topics covered:  Our lives are spent in an almost endless conflict with everyone and everything that we believe to be the cause of our pain and negativity; We pretend to be someone because we do not know who we really are; Discovering who you really are comes with the cost of discovering all that you are NOT.

The more we allow our mind to drift where -- and will -- as it pleases, the more likely will we find ourselves having fallen into some form of unexpected suffering. Being in full command of ourselves is inseparable from being in command of our attention; there is no other order, and no other freedom.

Classroom Talk: 10/23/2024 - No moment is painful in and of itself; any conflict, or suffering ascribed to it is a dark creation of our own unconscious, negative assessment of it.

Student Talks: 9/6/2024 - Key Lesson: As surely as planting a lemon seed will grow a tree full of lemons, so is the following true: any solution that begins with resisting (the pain of) some unwanted experience will not only prove itself fruitless, but always give birth to more of the same!

Classroom Talk: 8/28/2024 - When all is said and done, perfect order and true self-knowledge are inseparable; each reflecting the other in much the same way as is the beauty of a dark-red rose revealed through the eyes of its lover.

Student Talks: 8/9/2024 - Key Lesson: Every shocking revelation we are given to see, and to realize (if we will) as true about our present nature is -- at its heart -- an unseen act of mercy; it is the herald of an order of higher understanding unimaginable to the human mind.

Topics covered: Struggling to get what you want always sets you against other human beings; "For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers." -- New Testament; Not wanting a condition is the same as struggling to control the condition you don't want; Some moments are as painful as they are because you have an idea that they should not be that way. The real source of conflict is your ideas of what you want...

No unwanted experience of life will ever be "over" for us until we're inwardly awake enough...to get over wishing that it was.