Classroom Talk: 6/29/2003 - There are many times when the road to perdition, with all its punishment, is mistaken for the Path of Self-Perfection - as when one comes to believe that reliving regrets and missteps is the same as the work of correcting the nature responsible for them.

Classroom Talk: 10/25/2023 - The inevitable outcome of all unconscious self-compromise -- within ourselves, but primarily in relationships with others -- is to reach a kind of critical mass of resentment that then spills itself out on others in words and deeds too soon enacted, and too late regretted.

We must recognize the almost endless cycle of pressure, anxiety, anger, and regret that always appears with the promise that if we follow that branch of negativity, it will lead us back to the source of understanding where we'll be free at last. In fact, that branch we're tempted to follow belongs to something that can never complete itself, and that requires our energy to sustain it.

As paradoxical as it seems, the reason most of us find no lasting peace in life is because our mind is forever trying to find something outside itself in which it can rest. This condition is not unlike the little fish that, unhappy with just swimming around, went in search of water -- its hope being that if it could find what it was looking for then it would also find what was missing from i...

Featured Study Group Topic for the Week of March 10, 2014. Praying to change the world around us is pointless until we realize that the world around us is the way it is... because we are the way we are; only in the realization of this truth -- and in our agreement to make the sacrifices that it demands -- is there hope for both the world and for ourselves, as well.

Classroom Talk: 1/5/2022 - Painful thoughts, feelings of regret, the fear of some dark tomorrow: all point to a "distant fire" as the source of our suffering, even as they blow smoke in our eyes to ensure we don't see that they are what's burning us in any troubling moment.

Real higher understanding supplies you with everything you need to actualize it: clarity, instruction, and encouragement to succeed.

We are made to be self-correcting, so that each real correction effected in us elevates us above the dark and limiting influences we have been living under all our lives. Like moving from a hot desert to a cool mountain retreat, each discovery of what darkens our path in life moves us toward higher, happier ground. And though we may not yet understand how this works in us, each time we catch a...

Classroom Talk: 1/8/2020 - Where is tomorrow's fear other than in today's troubled imagination? And, if this is true, and IT IS... Then, what to do with our attention now? Let it be swallowed up in the dark shadow of what "may be"... Or, hold it in the Light of higher awareness where no shadow can dwell, let alone its fear?

Whenever we find ourselves in some "unwanted" part of ourselves, perhaps reliving an old heartache or caught in the throes of some irrepressible anger, old fear, or unyielding worry, part of this unwanted moment includes our certainty that we're trapped in this condition. And compounding our confusion over feeling ourselves captive in this way are all of the attending negative inner voices. Th...

For every impulse, each movement in the expanding heavens, there is a gravity equal to it; for each light, each bit of love, there is a darkness, a resentment or regret. Our place, if we accept it, is to always be present to the possibility of empowering what is light and bright...

It is impossible to change the relationship that you have with the world around you without changing the relationship that you have in yourself, with yourself. This is the secret teaching of the ages, including being the root of Christ's teaching, as it directly relates to the necessity of a new mind. Our task, if we want to be free human beings -- if we want a life in which we no longer...