Unwanted Moments

Topics covered: We don't want to escape our consciousness, we want to transform it. Negative thoughts and feelings don't need to be overcome, they need to be understood; You cannot resist something and learn about it at the same time. To resist is to separate, to push away; The problem with our attention is not that there are too many distractions. The problem is that we do not possess our own minds. Until we possess our own attention...

Topics covered: The spiritual path is the path of negation, not affirmation. You must lose your life in order to gain it; Immortality is the gradual realization that you are already whole; We were raised to believe that our worth is based upon how others see us; We were raised to believe that there should never be any disturbances; When the observer and the observed are not separate for us, we are a participant in creation, rather than the observer...

Question: How do you integrate and apply the principle that "I am bigger than this moment" when your mind is programmed otherwise? How do you practice stopping reacting? Answer: You don't practice stopping reacting, you see that you can't stop reacting.

Classroom Talk: 8/3/2025 - Given the values of the world in which we live today, it's no small wonder that the first of the beatitudes -- "Blessed are the poor in spirit" -- more often than not proves itself a painful paradox regarding the notion of real wealth; for the truth is -- as Christ taught -- that the less we take ourselves to be, the more we're given to discover all that we are, and forever will be.

Classroom Talk: 1/7/2024 - Any form of painful demand -- whether on others, or upon ourselves -- is born of unconscious attachment; it is proof of a level of consciousness that would rather cling to what has been, than allow real Life to help us see our True Self is not only the living incarnation of each new moment, but the eyes that see it take birth.

Classroom Talk: 10/2/2022 - Do what's wise, then what's desired. In the Light of that order is balance maintained, and all things otherwise thought profitable realized, accordingly.

Classroom Talk: 1/30/2022 - Painful reactions are born of an unseen resistance (to life). This means our suffering isn't created by the situation blamed for it, rather it is the negative effect of identifying with a lower level of consciousness that clings to this painful, mistaken belief: the first thing to do when having to deal with any unwanted moment... is to not want it!

Classroom Talk: 9/12/2021 - Part 1: What power has any painful moment over us save for having become unconsciously identified with our own negative reaction to it. Seen properly, this means the event we blame for our suffering is like looking in a mirror... and blaming the reflection for whatever we don't want to see in it! Part 2: Our willingness -- and the inner work it takes...

Classroom Talk: 5/30/2021 - In the end, all forms of psychological suffering can be traced back to a basic single source: the false belief that our unwanted conditions -- whatever they may be -- are greater than our capacity to change our relationship to them.

Classroom Talk: 4/18/2021 - Being able to realize, and then release one's resistance to any unwanted moment does more than help to change the "dark tide" of that event; it reveals that within us already dwell the untroubled "waters" of a celestial harbor: the timeless shelter of an eternal Self that becomes the same as our own...

Classroom Talk: 3/28/2021 - If it feels like the same unwanted moments keep coming around... think again: reality never repeats itself; creation is always new. To know why life seems to repeat itself -- and painfully so -- we need look no farther than to see how instantly identified we become with our (own) recurring negative reactions.

Classroom Talk: 2/28/2021 - The more we don't want to experience some unwanted moment, including the memory of one, the more real and protracted becomes the pain we feel, but not for the reasons we believe make it so. The pain in any negative reaction does not exist apart from the struggle of an unconscious self whose existence...