Classroom Talk: 4/3/2024 - When it comes to conflict between us, and any other -- let alone a person we may love -- anytime there's some kind of painful drama being enacted... each of us is responsible for whatever continues to be played out on that stage.

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!

In many ways, true blessings often come disguised as the worst moments; and yet, those who are patient enough to live in the presence of what seems to be a loss, or painful limitation of some kind, will soon see that temporary mask fall away, and see before them an impossibly kind and just face.

Classroom Talk: 5/7/2023 - There can be no "life after death" without realizing an order of Love that has no fear of dying. This Timeless Witness to its (own) creation doesn't see death as the end of life, but rather as its invisible partner in a ceaseless act of love.

Key Lesson: You can't work with what you are not, and you can't change what you hope to be. Work begins and ends in the same place: with where you are, and what you are in the moment. Any other effort is but part of a dream, as is the inevitable shock of being awakened from it.

It's a great mistake to believe that negative imagination needs our involvement to trap us in fearful, conflicted, or otherwise angry states of self. The truth is just the opposite: our most familiar -- and often dominant -- sense of 'I' is shaped by the recurrence of these negative states; where our unconscious identification with this dark inner machinery is, in fact, the real source of our sense of captivity.

Classroom Talk: 10/6/2021 - The more we dwell on something that we wish wasn't so, the more we soak ourselves in negative energies created by our own resistance. The longer we soak, the more we suffer; the more we suffer, the more we resist what seems to be the unwanted event when, in truth, what we are really drowning in are the dark waves of our own un-investigated consciousness.

The 'devil' on earth is nothing more, or less... than the manifestation of human ignorance in its lowest, most abased expression; (it is) a petty and unconscious level of 'self' that enlarges itself by gorging itself on the stimulating sensations that it creates as it identifies with its own unbridled (negative) imagination.

Classroom Talk: 11/03/2024 - Persistence – without our awareness of the parts of us that steadily insist there’s no further we can go – is a recipe for frustration; this painful sense of self slowly morphs from simple despair into an unholy cynicism that, in turn, serves to confirm what we see as our own unwanted, but unavoidable conclusion: we’ve no other choice but to give up our wish to transcend whatever limitation we’d been called to outgrow.

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.

Classroom Talk: 9/4/2002 - When we understand that our true purpose in life is to grow in the Wisdom of God's Plan, and that this Wisdom we seek itself seeks us to help it unfold in Goodness, then we also realize that whatever disappointments we encounter along the Way must themselves be a part of Wisdom's Eternal Plan. It is for this New Wisdom that we are spared from falling through that darkened door called discouragement...

Classroom Talk: 7/19/2002 - Part 1: When we feel overcome by a life seemingly turned against us, it is vital we understand these moments are not the outcome of some bitter Reality set against us. This suffering that seizes us is born of our resistance to seeing that the present foundation of our self is nothing like we had imagined it to be. Each such glimpse is a Gift of Reality, not Its denial of our hopes...