Classroom Talk: 8/23/2020 - Stop giving unwanted moments your ear, let alone a voice with which to complain about their sting, and soon there will be nothing left to resist... including the pain inherent in talking (to yourself) about how life has done you wrong!

Classroom Talk: 6/7/2023 - Here's the real reason why talking to ourselves about whatever is considered to be the cause of that "conversation" in our head is so exhausting: it's very hard work to make something (so big) out of what really amounts to nothing.

Classroom Talk: 8/2/2020 - Here's why no spiritual "secret" -- in and of itself -- has the power to transform, let alone raise our consciousness in any meaningful way: no self-knowledge, regardless how subtle, can serve its true purpose unless it is accompanied by the one element capable of actualizing it: consistent, persistent self-honesty.

Since what troubles us, troubles us now -- then now is when we must awaken to and address within ourselves whatever it is that makes us ache. To delay this interior work is to lose sight of the doorway that our own disturbed state opens for us and beckons us to enter.

Classroom Talk: 6/15/2003 - When we realize, at last, that there is no place in life towards which we are racing that is not already disappearing, and that there is no place where one willingly remains that isn't beginning anew within itself, then will we have at last arrived where our heart longs to be.

Classroom Talk: 5/22/2024 - It's impossible to let go of any painful moment until we lose interest in the troubled sense of self that we are deriving from it! So that the real secret of letting go begins with seeing how (our own) unconscious nature doesn't just reach to "catch" the experience it says it doesn't want, but then clings to it...

Here is perhaps the greatest of all spiritual mysteries: The reason so many fail in their effort to find and enter into the Kingdom of Heaven is because its gates cannot be opened by anyone standing outside of them. Those who stand the nearest to God...

Classroom Talk: 5/5/2021 - Peace of mind is not some "place" we can rush to; fulness of heart is not a possession to be claimed. We can only realize that these Divine gifts – of a quiet mind and overflowing heart – have already been given to us: an interior discovery which may prove to be the most difficult thing we will ever agree to do in this life.

Being still begins with being quietly aware that whatever seems to be whirling around you is really just a reflection of the world of unseen reactions within you.

The real reason for our impatience is not the condition upon which we blame it: impatience -- along with its dark fraternal twin, frustration -- is born of our refusal to realize some present limitation and to remain conscious of it until it can be outgrown and transformed.

When all is said and done, perfect order and true self-knowledge are inseparable; each reflecting the other in much the same way as is the timeless beauty of a dark red rose revealed through the eyes of its lover.

The Character of Goodness, of compassion and kindness that we would like to reflect and express before our friends (and enemies), requires that we place its life before our own. And yet, when we agree to this interior action of self-sacrifice, not only is our life returned to us, but we find that it has been made greater than it was -- even though we had to first surrender it to something seen...