Temptation

Student Talks: 02/06/2026 - Giving yourself empty things to do can't fill the emptiness you feel inside, so…risk leaving that space empty; allow it to be filled with something you can't give yourself: freedom from the fear of feeling empty.

Topics covered:  We always find fault with what captures us instead of finding fault with what got captured. "The fox condemns the trap, not himself." -- William Blake; In the same instant that we identify with what we believe will make us whole, there is fear that we will lose it. Then we set out to protect what we have identified with; How can we be immersed in suffering and yet not know anything about it? We don't question our suffering; we question what we believe is the source of it.

Remastered Classic Talk: 11/4/15 - Here is the obvious, but rarely acknowledged reason why we must dig in and do the difficult inner work needed for real self-transformation: if we don't change, we gradually come to wholly embody the very weaknesses whose destructive nature we wish weren't (living) within us. The courage to see the truth of this inevitable outcome gives us the reason, the will and the courage we need to succeed in our quest to regain command over our own heart, mind, and soul.

Student Talks: 07/25/2025 - Our true nature is not discovered by acquiring new knowledge, but by awakening to what has always been present: the light of a living awareness, waiting to be awakened, and realized as being inseparable from one’s True Self.  

Student Talks: 05/30/2025 - It’s not by accident that we reach interim points of mounting resistance in our work to be free, any more than we accidentally meet the challenge of some uncertain, unstable ground that waits to be gained the nearer we come to the summit of a mountain.

Classroom Talk: 11/20/2024 - Whenever we kneel to the temptation of some consoling indulgence, or struggle to acquire a power to protect us from a fear...we yield to, and serve the pleasure of a darkened desire that has promised, once again, to save us from (our) pain.

Topics covered:  People go into pain over being told that their pain is self-inflicted; Most of us are more interested in trying to answer our pain (resolve it) than in understanding it; The very last thing that a human being wants to do is give up their suffering.

Student Talks: 3/10/2023 - Key Lesson: Allowing any part of self to act in such a way as to deny yourself a new awareness of yourself -- whatever its quality -- is the same as refusing your right to realize the limitless depth and breadth of your true Self.

Topics covered: To paraphrase the well-known koan: If a tree falls in the woods, and there's no one there wishing it didn't, does it create fear or suffering?; The very struggle to escape the captivity of the consciousness that you are born into is why you remain a captive of that consciousness; The task is not to save yourself. The task is to realize a relationship with a part of you that does not need to be...

Student Talks: 11/18/2022 - Key Lesson: The past does not give birth to the future, any more than we might think to look for the living in a graveyard.

Topics covered: What we have called our life up until now cannot possibly be the totality of our possibilities; The first person to feel any form of hatred or resentment is the one who holds it, protects it, and projects it; Unconscious choices are made in order to protect what that level of consciousness deems as being valuable; Truth is a pathless land and belongs to another order of being that is already in you...

Student Talks: 3/18/2022 - Key Lesson: Part 1: By wanting are all things not wanted... thus created; much as joy and sorrow, bound as one... are related. Part 2: If you build it, they will come; if you leave it empty... it will be filled.