Classroom Talk: 11/1/2002 - Life is always new, which means there is no such thing as an "old" problem. The only thing aged in us, with regards to what continues to make us ache, is our worn out ideas about how to overcome our unwanted condition; dead-end resolutions that include learning to "just live" with regrets and resentments. What does, in fact, grow "older" in us -- and secretly seasons our suffering...

Painful experiences from my past have a way of coming to the surface and wrecking me all over again. How do I stop engaging myself with the past, and how do I leave this pain behind me once and for all? What is it in me that wants to re-live painful moments from my past, and what's it going to take for me to break through to totally present living? Is there a way to live in the present so that...

Our experience of each moment -- for its pleasure or pain, peace or trouble -- is a direct reflection of what we are in relationship with in the present.

So many people today are bitter, broken-hearted, or just plain angry because of what happened to them while growing up. The reasons for their resentment or regret are as countless as are the number of unconscious people who unknowingly create such pain in the lives of those they hurt. But nothing that happened yesterday -- as horrendous as it may have been -- has authority over the present moment and its new possibilities...

Topics covered: What usually follows a moment of regret is not a change of consciousness, but instead a new set of justifications to explain why we did what we did; We are easily "triggered" because we are loaded with pain, the weight of the past, and we don't know what do to with it; It is impossible to let go with one hand, and hold on with the other. That is not real letting go...

Topics Covered: It should be evident by now that we cannot give ourselves what is genuinely good. Despite our good intentions, why is the world the way that it is?; Instead of just wanting to be a better person, we must NEED to be a better person; Regret is a kind of unseen prayer that does not really change anything. Real prayer is connected to watching yourself in the moment of action...

Featured Study Group Topic for the Week of September 9, 2013. Here is the great prerequisite to realizing the Higher Life and Love for which you long: You must uncover why you consistently allow one thing -- i.e., one unwanted event, one disparaging comment, any old regret or familiar fear to become your all... instead of meeting these passing moments with the understanding that the All is mea...

A quiet mind never goes out looking for guidance because it never gets lost in thought...

Part 1: The more we anxiously look around for a way to deal with the fear of any moment imagined as yet to come, the more immediate grows the fear we experience in the here and now. Part 2: No condition, in and of itself, is ever the cause of psychological stress, fear, or regret; suffering of this kind is inherent in an unseen, unconscious level of "self" that resists changing conditions because it is incapable of changing with them.

Topics covered: When without falling into any form of despair, depression, or regret, you begin to lose all interest in looking for yourself in any image or belief - because the taste of yourself no longer tastes good to you - that's when you begin to wake up; The mind sees in parts -- sometimes through our intellect, sometimes emotion, sometimes sensation; Lower nature is constructed so as to identify with the parts of the whole, not the whole...

It is not our duty to suffer over what will be or won't be -- to live with painful regret or guilt over what was or wasn't. Our sole task is to be responsible for what is -- and to allow this relationship with life to produce what it will. There may or may not be suffering in this order of responsibility but, if there is, it will be transformational as opposed to self-tormenting -- which is th...

Topics covered:  "We shall not cease from exploration, And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started, And to know that place for the first time." -- T. S. Eliot; A paradox is understood when seemingly irreconcilable opposites are seen as complimentary; One question that we never ask ourselves: "If I do something that I regret, why does it seem like that action was the only choice in that moment?"