Spiritually speaking, blaming life for revealing a limitation of yours is like getting angry at the water in a swimming pool (into which you just fell) because... you never learned how to swim!...

Topics covered: 'You're just going to have to drive yourself crazy'; You can't make a quiet mind and an open heart with thought; This work is to help develop all of your parts, not just the intellect; You need to be one with events that happen, which thought can't do; Contemplation is different from thinking about what happened; Thought can only imagine that it's working out problems; We resis...

There are no enemies without someone, or something to blame for our pain...

The truth is, we are never trapped by any experience. The painful experience of feeling trapped is the effect of the trap, not the trap itself. The mouse always blames the cheese…

It is impossible to change the relationship that you have with the world around you without changing the relationship that you have in yourself, with yourself. Before you can become the kind of human being who never again hurts another -- either in thought or deed -- you must change the relationship you have with yourself. This is the secret teaching of the ages. Inside of it, we learn about...

Giving your consent to live in fear of some moment to come is no different than walking out of the warm sunlight into a dark shadow . . . and then blaming the sun for your sudden chill.

Topic: The First and Last Step to Self-Liberation (Classroom Talk 8/16/23)

When there is no one and nothing left within oneself to blame for one's weakness, it's also pretty clear that turning to one's "self" for help is like asking a donkey for the directions to heaven.

Any agitation in the soul that is unattended by the conscious light of awareness is a dark heat, one that is unable to change anything about itself except for what it blames for its burning state.

Lending your ear to thoughts and feelings that are telling you what's wrong with you is like agreeing to listen to music that you can't stand, and then blaming the composer for the disharmony that you feel.

The failure to reconcile what disturbs you about the world around you, while averting your eyes from the world within you, is very much like continuing to overeat... and then blaming your stomach for getting upset....

Topic: The Courage to Face and "Erase" Whatever You're Afraid to See in Yourself (Classroom Talk 4/26/23)