I have and hold the hope of being able to know I am walking into the kitchen, or down a country road, awake and present to myself...

Classroom Talk: 6/18/2004 - If we would examine closely the strands of those unseen webs that seem to catch and hold us captive every day, we would see that they are nothing more than the stuff of our own thoughts -- spun off by a mind never quite content to be where it is with what it has.

The one great exercise of prayer is... To come wide awake and to place the center of myself into the center of my will and... Having done so, take this gathering of attention and surrender it wholly to my God...

Classroom Talk: 05/11/2025 - The only thing good about any negative reaction is the revelation of how useless is that (level of) suffering to change anything about our present nature, let alone the condition it convinces us to blame for its pain.

Guy Finley explains that a real prayer formulates naturally within spiritual aspirants once they clearly see the fact of their own nature, and realize the necessity for genuine higher help.

For the majority of us, what we call being renewed has nothing to do with what is real renewal. Mostly what we feel as renewal is when some idea or a hope that we have gets fulfilled, filling us in turn with a sense of excitement; and then, in that feeling of being full of ourselves, comes a certain kind of pleasure that we take as being the same as self-renewal in this life.

Classroom Talk: 11/12/2023 - Anytime we struggle in the dark of ourselves -- trying to change our nature -- our efforts are misdirected; our real work is to learn to see by the light that dwells in that darkness, and to know the truth of ourselves, as (it is) revealed.

Deliberately dare to slow down your life when everything in you -- or around you -- is screaming "Rush." Why is this bold action a prayer? Every person knows what it feels like to be carried off by an anxious state, so you decide: when some anxiety comes along and takes over your life -- are you an awake inwardly centered person -- or are you an unconscious outwardly driven man or woman? Wh...

Learning to let the whole world pass us by is the only way to discover that the fear of losing some imagined power, possession, or position in life is the same dying to an equally imagined lower level of self that "lives" to cling to it.

Part 1: A real wish rises out of the ashes of expectations realized and found wanting. A false wish is a temporary spark that -- no matter how many times it's fulfilled -- never quells the fire that gives it birth. Part 2: To be spiritually asleep is to be unaware of other levels of awareness.

Classroom Talk: 1/11/2023 - Just being fully present to yourself negates 95% of your missteps in life; the other 5% of the time, when you have to pick yourself up off the ground, serves to remind you of how important it is to always be watchful of "where" you are, and "who" is talking to you as you walk through life.

Topics covered: missing the mark as a human, you are not going to save yourself, the importance of confessing yourself to yourself, you don't know what to do with not wanting to be you, what do you really want, false pride, it isn't God that benefits from your prayers...