Suffering

Topics covered:  There is something waiting to grow in you that you are responsible for and that requires your attention; There is a difference between a familiar reaction, and our awareness of it; A mirror reflects whatever is before it, no matter what the object is. Neither the mirror nor the object being reflected is aware of each other -- they do not know each other -- but we can be aware of both at the same time.

Topics covered:  We can clearly see when other people are harming themselves unnecessarily. But what about the harm that we do to ourselves?; All judgment is blind by its nature; We falsely believe that hiding our pain from ourselves is the same as having escaped from its influence.

Topics covered: The mind is forever trying to find a way to escape from the prison that it is constructing; Is there any other way to respond to a negative reaction other than to identify with, and then act out its choices... only to react again to the inescapable result of the choice we have made, and in whose promise we've become identified? What if its choices are not ours?; We go into thought in order to get out of the unwanted condition, when thinking itself IS the condition.

Topics covered:  The mind never stops thinking about the experience it is having in the moment, and its experience is the product of thinking; Thought is always telling us the meaning of the moment. The real meaning from the moment cannot be separated from the moment itself. The moment IS the meaning; The life we are seeking -- the freedom and peace we are looking for -- is not waiting for us in a time to come after we have achieved something.

Topics covered:  Nobody ever believes that they are part of the problem; Why does the possibility of changing seem to become more elusive the older that we get?; There is a possibility of perfection that has nothing to do with thought, but we spend most of our lives lost in thought about how we can achieve an imagined perfection in a time to come.

Doing the right thing, in the right way, begins with seeing the right order of things. All of life's lessons point us toward this simple, celestial truth. Through the pain of missteps and mistakes, we are gradually awakened to discover what has always been right before our eyes: whenever things are out of order within us, our choices and actions must follow -- and sorrow is the inevitable result.

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.

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.

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

The mind asleep to itself doesn't realize that it created the problem that it can't stop trying to resolve; and that the more it struggles to try and think through a solution to its self-induced conflict, the greater grows its struggle to escape that suffering.