Student Talks: 05/30/2025 - It’s not by accident that we reach interim points of mounting resistance in our work to be free, any more than we accidentally meet the challenge of some uncertain, unstable ground that waits to be gained the nearer we come to the summit of a mountain.

Student Talks: 10/15/2021 - Key Lesson: Time is a wrinkle in the mind: and much as the silent reflection of a cloud-filled sky can't be seen upon the wind-tossed waters of a mountain lake, neither can the reflection of Heaven be seen in a mind churning with thought.

Student Talks: 3/28/2025 - We can be -- and often are -- sound asleep going through the motions of life with our eyes wide open. To be able to see — to be aware of - what our mind is actually looking at, experiencing, and responding to…is the first step in the process of awakening; it not only strengthens our wish to attend to the present moment, but to remember that any time our mind is unattended…it slumbers in fitful dreams, from which it cannot awaken itself. 

Classroom Talk: 7/24/2024 - The true purpose of any troublesome “mountain” that seems to appear out of nowhere – standing directly between us and what we want -- isn't to make us into better climbers, or even to finally crest its summit; such barriers exist for a single reason: to help us see that no impassable “mountain” exists apart from the unconscious mind that has created it.

Topics covered: Spiritually speaking, if you are going to become a new human being, something old has to die; Every desire promises you freedom. But does the fulfillment of a desire ever really deliver the freedom it promised?; To die to oneself does not involve doing something with one's own will. "The Kingdom of Heaven cannot be taken by force."

Topics covered: There is an interior sanctuary that awaits human beings if they will only follow the breadcrumbs of truth that lead them there; There is nothing within thought that can satisfy the soul that hungers for what is true. What we really hunger for already exists; How often have we filled ourselves with things outside of ourselves -- including images produced by our own mind -- that turn out to be futile?

Calling on anxious thoughts to check the rising tide of some fearful feeling is like trying to stop a landslide by throwing rocks at it!

Classroom Talk: 07/27/2025 - No condition that our unconscious nature imagines into existence can change, let alone liberate that level of self that, out of fear, finds itself compelled to imagine it…in order to feel secure! 

Remastered Classic Talk: 02/28/2016 - The inevitable sense of emptiness that eventually nips at the heels of most men and women is the sudden realization that in spite of having "banked" a billion self-stimulating sensations -- even when all have been added up -- they still amount to nothing.

Topics covered:  For all of the possessions that we have, we do not have peace. You cannot possess real peace, and yet you can never lose it; What deceives you into seeking peace promises peace in a time to come after you have obtained what it has prescribed. We become obsessed with the peace that we imagine is coming; "You will look for me, but you will not find me; and where I am, you cannot come." -- New Testament

Topics covered:  Without knowing it, something in us sets out each day with the secret intention of remaining the same as it was the day before; We say that we want peace and freedom, or a relationship with the Divine, but psychologically speaking, we spend our time defending old beliefs so that what is old and familiar remains in place; You can't transcend the nature that wants to remain as it is unless you first SEE it.