Suffering

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.

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.

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...

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...

Topics Covered: We are born into a world in which we are taught to fear suffering; Fear of suffering comes with the idea that there will be a time to come in which we will no longer suffer. Fear always creates the idea of a time to come; The only thing that the unconscious nature knows to do with suffering is to create a "tomorrow" to escape it. Suffering is inseparable from a nature that has...

Topics Covered: Egotism and self-love produces useless suffering; Useless suffering cannot be separated from useless, unseen resistance; The more we resist something, the more we suffer, believing that the resistance to what we want to do or be will somehow liberate us from what we don't want; The more you talk to yourself about why you suffer, the more you suffer...

Classroom Talk: 1/21/2005 - How strange it is that we resent carrying on our backs the pointed opinion of others, when it is we who give this barbed thought its power to trouble us. Think not? Then let us ask: what possible suffering can there be in what another thinks of me, unless I am holding the same thought as he?

Classroom Talk: 4/30/2004 - Blaming others for the pain we feel each time someone fails to live up to our expectations is no different than burning our tongue on coffee that's too hot to swallow, and then calling our cup an idiot!

Classroom Talk: 4/30/2004 - Blaming others for the pain we feel each time someone fails to live up to our expectations is no different than burning our tongue on coffee that's too hot to swallow, and then calling our cup an idiot!

Classroom Talk: 5/23/2003 - Wherever it may be that we are in such a rush to arrive, we're sure to find it a more enjoyable place if only we would dare to get there relaxed!