Student Talks: 7/8/2022 - Key Lesson: Part 1: Unattended thoughts attract unwanted relationships. Part 2: Identifying with any painful reaction is a form of negative fascination; it is an inverse form of Narcissism where we feel drawn to "stare" at -- to dwell on -- whatever may be that dark thought or feeling we're so sure we don't want to see. Stranger still, the more we resist...
Student Talks: 2/4/2022 - Key Lesson: Painful reactions are born of an unseen resistance (to life). This means our suffering isn't created by the situation blamed for it, rather it is the negative effect of identifying with a lower level of consciousness that clings to this painful, mistaken belief: the first thing to do when having to deal with any unwanted moment... is to not want it!
Topics covered: Worry never gives back a return on the investment of time, energy and tears that we pour into it; The moment a disturbance comes up, the only thing we know to do is remand ourselves over to a consciousness that can only worry about what to do about it; The general reason why we worry is that something in us believes that things are not the way they are supposed to be...
Student Talks: 3/11/2022 - Key Lesson: Coming to realize any limitation in our consciousness is not the denial of our passage into and through whatever may be the next stage of our inner development; all such revelations along the Way are, in fact, the threshold of an invisible door that -- if we will but dare to stand there -- knocking on it -- never fails to open, revealing a secret entrance...
Student Talks: 2/11/2022 - Key Lesson: The more we realize our higher, true role in life is to act as an agent for atoning the appearance of "what is" with "what has been" -- by agreeing to surrender the parts of us that interfere with this reconciliation -- the more we see the beauty of this sacrifice as inseparable from an ineffable peace that comes with no longer being apart from Real Life.
Here's why we are the unwitting victim of every voice in our head promising to protect us from whatever may be disturbing us: there would be no disturbance for us to deal with were it not for these same "voices" -- our own troubled thoughts -- pointing to, and then telling us what we need to fear.
Topics covered: In the world of imagination there is no heaven, there is only hell disguised as heaven; The only thing that has authority over you is what you look to for a sense of self; A machine can never be free because it can only do what it has been originally programmed to do; A machine can only work within the confines of its own content; Freedom from the machine already exists...
Student Talks: 8/5/2022 - Key Lesson: 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.
Student Talks: 12/30/2022 - Key Lesson: How can we ever hope to be at peace with life when -- for the most part -- all we know to live for is the endless struggle to carve out a piece of it for ourselves?
Student Talks: 10/28/2022 - Key Lesson: Part 1: There is no map to the Kingdom of Heaven that isn't out of date the moment we set out to follow it. Part 2: Consider the one most free who has learned to see, even in adversity, the Good... whose unfailing Light shines on even in the darkest night.
Student Talks: 10/14/2022 - Key Lesson: Without an anchor, a ship is carried off by any shallow current or wave that passes beneath its bow. And so it is with us... as long as we try to navigate through this life without being able to anchor our attention in a place of our own choosing.
Topics covered: Anything that you can imagine cannot be new, because imagination uses the content of the past in order to create its images; Thinking is useless to help you create the life of security that thought pursues in imagination. Thought can't deliver you to an unshakable security; The spiritual solution to your problems is to become properly sick and tired of yourself...