Watchfulness

We don't usually think to ourselves that we're asleep and that our entire identity is the moment to moment fabrication of what we are reacting to in that instant. Until there is something that rides the waves of these reactions and sees them crest and fall, we will appear and disappear with every last wave. In watching the waves we will not mistake ourselves for being the waves.

Most of us like sitting by a river and watching the water or anything else come downstream and then disappear in the distance. When watching a river, we don't usually focus on one thing in the stream and then resist it as it floats by. We are intended to be the observer of the stream of our interior life in much the same way that we would enjoy watching a river.

Topics covered:  We have been educated, inculcated, and conditioned to believe that our task is always to appear as if we know who we are and what we're doing, and anything that would challenge that is immediately seen as an enemy. But in this work, that nature that would hide its weakness is the enemy, because it ensures that we never bring into the light of understanding that which alone can change and transform that nature that lives with that kind of weakness and works to hide it; A weakness becomes a strength when it changes everything that individual is in relationship with. Anything that changes inside of a person changes the whole relationship they're in from that moment forward.

Classroom Talk: 5/28/2023 - Realize the amount of pain in your impatience, and in that revelation you will also know the extent to which you're deceived about who you are, and the true purpose of (your) life.

Classroom Talk: 4/30/2023 - The witness to experience is not bound by it, any more than a clear sky can be captured by a passing cloud, or a sound can seize the ear that hears it.

Classroom Talk: 7/31/2022 - Part 1: It is impossible to be afraid of oneself, and be in command of oneself at the same time. Part 2: Whatever fear seeds in us, it breeds in us.

Classroom Talk: 4/24/2022 - It is a distinct stage in the development of the aspirant when -- rather than being easily distracted by some imagined consolation for his pain, or by concluding who is to blame for it -- his first and real preference in that dark moment is to increase his awareness of his condition, and not to find ways around it.

Classroom Talk: 11/7/2021 - We must make -- and keep -- a special place within us for what we love; otherwise, our heart becomes an overnight motel filled with the visitations of a thousand fickle lovers... not one of which is capable of loving anything other than itself.