Classroom Talk: 11/21/2018 - The past sits in constant judgment of the Presence moment; first comparing, then imprisoning it to the inevitable corruption inherent in the constant replay of one's own memory: (this is) a completely unconscious nature... that not only already "knows" how things should be, but that summarily resists any challenges to its carefully crafted reality.

Classroom Talk: 5/24/2020 - Struggling to escape the mind-breaking pain of any past regret is about as useful as hating ourselves for having fallen into a pit of quicksand... Where the more we fight to escape the hold it has over us, the deeper into it we sink.

Classroom Talk: 4/17/2002 - Revisiting one's past and living out what once was is a false light at sea that promises safe harbor, but that draws the unwary to crash upon the rocks of regret and sorrow yet to be resolved. Learn to make the present moment your personal port of call and watch how the waves of what didn't work out disappear in the perfect calm of It's sheltering Reality.

Classroom Talk: 2/23/2022 - The past -- whatever its pain -- only exists in the present moment as a place of suffering due to an unconscious level of self that -- on its own -- first recalls that time and place of sorrow, and then resists the torment of its own conditioned memory.

Classroom Talk: 5/21/2023 - Nothing in the universe can make you relive some painful moment from your past as long as you choose to live in the self-renewing awareness that no old dark thought has the power to define you, let alone drag you down.

It's impossible to die to the pain of our past... as long as we remain identified with an unconscious nature that can't seem to go through a day without reliving some dark memory it then summarily resists.

Classroom Talk: 5/27/2020 - Most people would rather complain about some pain-filled experience from their past than do the inner work it takes to see into and through a lower level of consciousness that (literally) lives to repeat what it swears it can’t escape... no matter how hard it tries!

Featured Study Group Topic for the Week of May 21, 2018. Untouched, uncorrupted by what once was, and yet unfolding from it -- as does a tender new flower from its stem -- comes forth the ever-present moment. But (such) newness holds no familiar pleasure for a mind locked in time: where its struggle to be free unfolds in self-spun captivity, an unwitting but willing captive of a prison whose b...

Starting life over is something we must do every second. We must not wait until we want to start over because at that point wanting to start life over is only our futile wish to avoid what has already happened. We are tied to whatever we avoid, so trying to start our life over because we want to get away from our sad-self -- or the sorry situations it has created -- is like leaping onto a sink...

You've written that: "No one ever falls into a dark psychological hole that he didn't help dig!" I see what you're trying to say, but I think that statement is rather offensive to survivors of child abuse, violence, etc. (From student correspondence)...