Wisdom

Topics covered: It is Grace that shows us our limitations and weaknesses, even as almost nothing in us wants to know about them; We have been deceived into protecting something in ourselves that lives to ruin our own lives, and by extension the lives of others; Is anger a strength or a weakness? Anger deceives us into believing it is a strength, but it is a weakness, a limitation that resists the moment and limits our possibilities.

Only as we run out of ways to explain our pain to ourselves do we come to realize the true source of that suffering; a revelation that includes the shocking fact that whatever keeps giving us the reasons for this pain... is inseparable from its unwanted, yet unabated continuation.

Student Talks: 5/17/2024 - Key Lesson: There is no out-running any unwanted sense of self...any more than the dark shadows of a wind-swept tree in the late-afternoon sun can escape its own branches that first creates them, and then casts them out into the world.

Topics covered: The last thing that occurs to you when you are negative is doubt about the reasons for the negativity. Doubt should be the first thing that occurs to you; Honesty and genuine humility are directly connected to each other; The possibilities of a negative reaction are limited to the content of the consciousness that is embroiled in the reaction; A negative reaction comes...

Topics Covered: It is not we who are taking a journey... Rather, we are being taken on a journey. The journey is not through the world outside of us. The journey is into and through ourselves. The wisdom we seek is already within us; Wisdom is understanding that the possessions of this world come and go; There is no wisdom in having an enemy to resent. There is no wisdom in fear...

Topics Covered: Wisdom, peace and silence are intimately connected to a new understanding of a unity that had always been here; Thoughts are outside of you, and you will not find wisdom through them; We do not know how to search for wisdom because we do not yet know how to BE; How did the wise man become wise? He stopped answering his own questions...

Topics Covered: Judgment is an unconscious reaction to an unwanted moment; Out of a disturbance can be born a new connection to the Divine that created that disturbance in the first place for the purpose of revelation; Reactions tell us what we should do to change the event that is unwanted by that reactionary nature; The work isn't about trying to become the new person that...

Topics Covered:Real freedom cannot be shattered. What kind of freedom is it if it can be taken away?; The farther one travels, the less one knows; The outer world is not separate from the inner world in the usual way that we think; We usually think of karma in the sense of a painful consequence for having done something wrong. The word "karma" is more closely connected...

Topics Covered: Everything is in the only place it can be in the moment. If we are struggling, then it is us who is in the wrong place; It is not really the same familiar day that we live over and over again. What we are really living over and over again is the familiar content of our own consciousness, which cannot be separated from the experience we have of life...

Student Talks: 1/29/2021 - Key Lesson: Just as a those who climb mountains must, at times, reach above themselves to gain a grip on a narrow ledge, we too must dare to go beyond ourselves if we wish to reach, let alone change our destiny. To that end, we must never forget the following truth: There's no danger in self-ascent...

Topics Covered: Resistance is bondage. "Not wanting" is a form of bondage that can't be separated from its opposite of "wanting"; Within every imagined want is contained the fear that what we want will not come; There is another order of our own being that cannot be made less than it already is; Silence is not just the lack of sound, but it is backdrop and foundation that allows...

Topics Covered: If you want to be safe, you must have concluded that you are not; The condition that we are being convinced to avoid is a conclusion that we have reached about it; Come to end of all that you can do for yourself, but don't let it end there; Thought can't understand the holy spirit; Seek ye first the kingdom of heaven; Love does not make a single demand...