Topics covered: The kind of peace that can so easily be turned into conflict is not genuine peace; When it comes to our spiritual life, there is nothing more important than "location, location, location," which is the place where we invest our attention, time and energy; There is a psychological location within us where there is perfect peace. That location of perfect peace will never be found in the outer world.
Topics covered: The truest answer to any question that life asks is not an intellectual answer; Every discovery we make in the world around us is really a discovery of the world within us; We are drawn to nature because the qualities in nature are first and foremost already existing within consciousness. Everything nature will ever show us is already a part of our True Self...
Topics covered: We cannot add anything to what we already are by pursuing what we want; There can be nothing more upside-down than people being unable to see that their life is being given to them; "Hope in things seen" is the same as hope in a time to come. Wanting (and not wanting) is always in time; There is a wisdom that transcends desire; Whatever state you find yourself in...
Topics Covered: The world itself is not upside-down. It is the way we see the world that makes it seem upside-down. What is upside-down is a consciousness that only sees what it wants; We are always given everything that we need to be whole, but we are unhappy because we can't see and therefore don't experience that fact; The purpose of your existence cannot be imagined...
Topics covered: Blame is the denial of the manifestation of your nature. Be responsible for your own nature and for its manifestions; It would not occur to you to look for an answer unless there was also a feeling that something is missing; The perfect answer to your pain has been with you all along, but you have not been able to see it because the pain itself is what has been looking...
Topics covered: My reaction to what I don't want from life validates my pain; The world we see isn't the problem. The problem is the way we see the world around us and ourselves within in it; I'm in an endless struggle with the world because I am in opposition to anything that opposes my will and what my idea of life is, and what I'm supposed to get from it; Try to be someone...
Topics covered: You are meant to be the master of your interior house, which is a responsibility that you've been given as a gift by the Divine; The spiritual path is not about arriving somewhere imagined or earning a reward. What we are after is entering into a new, higher relationship with life that already exists; Until you build on a foundation that is true, everything that you build will be shaky.
Topics covered: Not wanting to see something that is right in front of you is willful ignorance. You have to be willing to see the truth that you don't want to see; There is no such thing as a painful want that is natural; The constant state of "I want" goes before you to make the straight places crooked; When you meet a moment that you don't want, you immediately know what you DO want in...
Student Talks: 6/3/2022 - Key Lesson: When it comes to developing a living relationship with the Divine, good intentions cost nothing, which is why the road to hell is paved with useless coins. On the other hand, making conscious efforts comes with the cost of encountering the reality of our present level of being; of seeing what we are actually capable of doing, and what we are not...
Student Talks: 5/6/2022 - Key Lesson: Part 1: Until we can see that unconscious identification sits at the root of all useless suffering nothing real can change for us -- let alone within us -- save for what we're moved to imagine -- and then identify with -- as the next new solution to our pain. Part 2: False 'I' is a disease. Real I is the healing. Awakening is the prescription...
Student Talks: 4/29/2022 - Key Lesson: It is a distinct stage in the development of the aspirant when -- rather than being easily distracted by some imagined consolation for his pain, or by concluding who is to blame for it -- his first and real preference in that dark moment is to increase his awareness of his condition, and not to find ways around it.
Topics covered: What the wanter in you really wants is to continue wanting; A person can't understand a true teaching if he or she is already full of belief about what the teaching is; The nature of the thoughts that offer to lead you through a disturbance are connected to what you want and to what you don't want; The more conflict that is created by thought, the more that thought is called...