Surrender

Classroom Talk: 9/28/2025 - 

Life gives. 

Life asks.

And when, at last, 

We are willing 

To surrender whatever

Life may ask of us,

Excluding nothing –

Let alone our most 

Familiar sense of self –

Then, for having died 

To the fear of death 

We are set free.

Classroom Talk: 05/11/2025 - The only thing good about any negative reaction is the revelation of how useless is that (level of) suffering to change anything about our present nature, let alone the condition it convinces us to blame for its pain.

Classroom Talk: 01/26/2025 - The path to self-perfection weaves its secret way through the land of imperfection, where only the conscious awareness of what we are shows us not just who and what we have been, but all that we are made to be...as we agree to be perfected right where we stand.

Classroom Talk: 9/29/2024 - In this life – regardless of circumstance – there is no greater reward than our God-given right to see what is true, and then to do what is asked of us in the light of that revelation; neither is there any task that comes with so great a personal price.

Classroom Talk: 9/1/2024 - 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: 3/31/2024 - The reason why the search for the "Truth" of oneself is called "pathless"... is because it's not taken in steps, let alone in any known direction; rather, the "journey" to authentic self-liberation is found in our endless opportunity to enter into an ever-higher order of self-understanding that -- like the light in which it is revealed -- never stops expanding. And... we are invited to travel along.

Classroom Talk: 3/3/2024 - Once we understand that all forces -- even the seemingly contradictory ones -- are secretly complementary, we stand on the threshold of not only discovering the lost secret of letting go and letting God... but, at the same time, find that we are well on our way to realizing the unconditional holiness of life.

Classroom Talk: 4/2/2023 - There is no reward for love, let alone for being "loving." Either love ITSELF is the reward, or it is not.

Classroom Talk: 2/6/2022 - The more we realize our higher, true role in life is to act as an agent for atoning the appearance of "what is" with "what has been" -- by agreeing to surrender the parts of us that interfere with this reconciliation -- the more we see the beauty of this sacrifice as inseparable from an ineffable peace that comes with no longer being apart from Real Life.

Classroom Talk: 9/5/2021 - Part 1: Let every disappointment in life be as the lighted wick of a lamp to first illuminate, and then to consume the attachment now revealed. Part 2: The beginning and the end of all true religion is one thing: surrender. Which begs the question: Surrender of what... and to what? The one who finds the answer to these two seemingly separate questions...

Classroom Talk: 6/27/2021 - Contemplation is sustained attention on a question the heart holds in its keeping, knowing, full well, that the mind -- of itself -- cannot answer. This form of sustained conscious inquiry is the ground of true meditation: it is creation aware of itself.

Classroom Talk: 6/20/2021 - You cannot protect yourself from psychological pain or disappointment and hope to court the Divine at the same time. The narrow entrance into the heart of heaven is a movement; (it is) an unknowable accord found only where revelation and letting go converge and merge, and from their union give birth to a new...