Classroom Talk: 7/2/2003 - Freedom from self-wrecking behavior must begin with our recognition that we are voluntarily serving that which compromises us, even though we may strongly claim the counter is true. Such a conscious awareness of (this) conflict inherent in our own divided mind may be difficult to endure, but only if we fail to realize this last point: This conscious awareness (and it alone) is the seed of a new action that eventually flowers in a self-wholeness that is one and the same with true self-freedom.

The onset of any problem you may have with life represents "first contact" with an unknown part of your present nature that - should you choose in favor of making it conscious to yourself - will soon cease to be problematic.

In the end there is only one real freedom...and that is whether or not we give ourselves - freely - to what each moment asks of us.

The sure way to strengthen some personal sense of self-limitation is to keep talking to yourself about it!...

If we will only give everything we have to whatever we may be doing at the moment then, when that relationship reaches its natural end, we will always find we have been given more than we had at the start. It is Law: to be filled anew, we must fully empty ourselves of ourselves time and time again.

There is no right wrong emotion; there is no true false feeling; there is no positive negative state: End of story. To begin seeing this spiritual truth is the first step in walking away from -- and then dying to -- a lower level of self; the part of us that doesn't care what it feels ... only that it has some kind of emotion with which it can be identified.

It is in the acceptance of life as it is - as it is given to us in each moment - that we find the wholeness, the holiness that is the one true center of this storm called "life".

If we will only dare give everything we are to whatever we may be doing at the moment then, when that relationship reaches its natural end, we will always find we have been given more than we had at the start. It is Law: to be filled anew, we must be willing to empty ourselves of ourselves time and time again.

The pain and stress of uncertainty persists in us not because uncertainty is some mandatory Reality but because there are parts of us that fear -- and therefore resist -- having an unknown future. Our "solution" is to unconsciously imagine a desirable secure time to come... an image whose unseen mirrored opposite is (by law) the uncertain self whose painful desires drive this dark cycle.

It isn't until the ground drops out from beneath us for the hundredth time that we suddenly realize falling down is not our only option. Faintly, but surely, if we will listen, another Law in our own nature calls us to realize its power: we can catch, suspend, and drop our own weighted reactions. And so it goes that we slowly learn to take wing.

The most simple spiritual lessons are often the highest ones and, as it turns out, the most difficult ones for us to learn because of a certain law that governs the realization of any truth: In order to receive something high we must become low and simple, a state of self that is repugnant to all within us that considers itself mighty and wise.

No one is obligated to feel spiritual remorse; yet, “it is written” in the stars themselves that all must eventually pay for what they have done against themselves, or others. For Justice through Balance is the great Law, enforced by a tireless, unfailing Love... whose final consolation is a pure heart no longer capable of inflicting pain upon another, or itself.