When we talk about making changes in ourselves, it could be said that it's like climbing a mountain. Why is the mountain a metaphor for spiritual change? There's a certain kind of effort necessary for climbing, isn't there? Also, the mountain represents a higher view. Because as you ascend the mountain, not only does the atmosphere change in terms of becoming more rarified, but every step higher up the mountain produces...

Topics covered: Resistance arises from fear of an identity being threatened; We are born into a world of comparison which causes illusions and identifications; Each event we identify with strengthens the illusion of identification; We are meant to enter into a relationship with another order of consciousness; Fear arises when we challenge a belief; There is no psychological fear without negati...

Topic: To See or Not to See (Classroom Talk 3/27/24)

Classroom Talk: 3/27/2024 - New, true self-knowledge re-orders the world we see because, for one thing, the way we experience each moment of life is inseparable from how we understand it; so that just as a fractured mirror can only reflect back an image that seems shattered, so is it true that a divided mind can't see what is holy.

Classroom Talk: 3/20/2024 - So-called "self-love" is the endless hunger of an unconscious nature for the attention of others... to feed its insatiable appetite to feel as important as it imagines itself to be.

Student Talks: 11/3/2023 - Key Lesson: The ceaseless, anxious search to find our true place in life, including what we should be doing with it, can never lead to a happy ending until we realize -- in real terms -- to "whom" it is our life belongs... and to what end.

Student Talks: 10/13/2023 - Key Lesson: No peace appears outside of, or apart from the disturbance that conceals it, and no disturbance appears outside of, or apart from the peace that reveals it. They are inseparable celestial characters, each surrendering itself to become the other... in a ceaseless, seamless Divine act of creation.

Student Talks: 2/24/2023 - Key Lesson: My most contented hours are those filled with emptiness; and I regret -- as comes their appointed time -- having to fill these precious moments with what is little more than the mandatory, but mostly empty business of this world: attending to all of the virtually endless forms that are, at best, shadows of the real... at worst, vanities.

Student Talks: 7/15/2022 - Key Lesson: The problems and pains that plague a divided mind disappear in the same moment as they appear in a mind unified with itself.

Student Talks: 10/15/2021 - Key Lesson: Time is a wrinkle in the mind: and much as the silent reflection of a cloud-filled sky can't be seen upon the wind-tossed waters of a mountain lake, neither can the reflection of Heaven be seen in a mind churning with thought.

Student Talks: 5/21/2021 - Key Lesson: Enlightenment is not an "achievement" because part of its realization is there's no one there to claim it... any more than one can "own" sunlight. (It is) a level of being that sees, effortlessly, the following truth: Real Life is secretly a single, beautiful movement incapable of contradicting itself...

Topic: Freedom from Anxious Thoughts and Feelings Starts Here (5/5/21 Classroom Talk)