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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Classroom Talk: 3/2/2022 - Peace is not the opposite of conflict; it is the absence of it.

Student Talks: 2/18/2022 - Key Lesson: Before the Light of the Divine can begin teaching us, revealing within us the healing facts needed to be set free, there's one thing we must see as true... beyond the shadow of any doubt: fear can't learn.

Student Talks: 6/5/2020 - Key Lesson: Whenever we set out seeking any kind of power, be it social, financial, and including spiritual, we are under the power of that which has no power; and where, regardless of what it may seem we've obtained, we have become increasingly powerless.

Classroom Talk: 5/3/2020 - No part of our present level of consciousness can be fully transcended without having completely experienced its nature; and this includes temptation, whatever its character. The "saint" is not someone who has never been tempted, but rather the one who -- having come to know its nature so fully...