Student Talks: 05/2/2025 - For us, death – even as we “learn to live” in its fearsome shadow – seems to mark the end of all that we have known; a looming “last show” when the theatre will be closed, and the final curtain drawn. But, there is another kind of death; and it is the end of fear: rebirth realized in the voluntary sacrifice, and concurrent death of the “knower”.

Topics covered:  The mind never stops thinking about the experience it is having in the moment, and its experience is the product of thinking; Thought is always telling us the meaning of the moment. The real meaning from the moment cannot be separated from the moment itself. The moment IS the meaning; The life we are seeking -- the freedom and peace we are looking for -- is not waiting for us in a time to come after we have achieved something.

Topics covered:  Nothing that is divided will find wholeness in whatever it looks for to bring an end to its divided state; Hell promises Heaven if we will just do what it says to do in order to escape the conflict. Hell is what the mind makes when it looks for the Heaven it has imagined; You can't love the image that your mind has made of Heaven without fearing and wanting to escape from the Hell that has been imagined.

Topics covered: It is an illusion to believe that there is a moment coming in the future in which you will gain the control you need in order to feel at peace; You can never be free from fear as long as you see life as the source of your fear; We are looking for, and have a need for, a higher life that we cannot find in this world. The life that we find in this world will eventually be taken away.

Topics covered: Fear tells you what you need to do in order to change the condition, ostensibly so that it will no longer be afraid; Judging yourself for making a mistake seems to prove to you that you are someone who is above those mistakes; Oil and water cannot be mixed together. Neither can freedom and fear. But we somehow believe that obeying fear's commands will eventually lead to freedom; Freedom and fear live in two different worlds.

Topics covered:  If we all wore t-shirts that described our inner lives, they would say "Out of Order: Proceed with Caution;" The great unspoken assumption behind all of our unrest is the certainty that what is happening should not be happening; Everyone and everything challenges the order that we have established. And anything or anyone that is out of order must be put back into order so that all will be well again, in a time to come.

Topics covered:  If you can connect to something, it must mean that it was already there before you decided to connect to it. So it is with what is True; You must first leave what is old in order to enter into something new. You must lose your life in order to gain it; The most important work in the world is remember your true self. What is stressed and anxious in you does not know what is important.

Topics covered:  Whenever are carried away by a fear, regret, worry, or any other negative state, we are being swept away by the past. We are swept away by the past because, presently, we live in its realm; Within the realm of the past are all of the imaginings of better a time to come; We see the present moment we are in through the shadow of the past. We see the present moment through the eyes of the past.

Topics covered:  You can't be at peace with the moment itself until you are at peace with yourself; It is inevitable that everything in nature is always being acted upon and being completed through that action. Why is that not true of us when it comes to a relationship with the Divine? What is interfering with this "Divine inevitability"?; What is it within us that sets boundaries? We end up as prisoners locked within the very boundaries that have been set, and then fear anything that threatens to trespass. We become walking "No Trespassing" signs.

Topics covered: When it comes to the Truth, there is no prescription that tastes good. The medicine is bitter, but it heals; Everything that is not 100% aligned with God's Will suffers as a result of that separation; Stop asking so many questions, and start seeing what is right in front of your eyes; Humanity dwells in a hell of its own making. To be full of anger, self-pity, resentment, fear, or any other negative state is to dwell in hell. Unconscious suffering is hell.

Topics covered:  We give more attention and care to the practical affairs of life than we give to our inner life. Nothing is more serious or more important than attending to your interior life; The punchline of the story about the twins who would inherit their Father's Kingdom was: "Freedom without service is an illusion. The great, sacred law is that whenever you are asked to place the needs of the kingdom above your own, you must do so regardless of the personal cost."

Topics covered:  One of the signatures of a small mind is the tendency to make mountains out of molehills; The sky has no reaction to the clouds that pass through it. But unlike the sky that allows everything to move through it, we identify with just about every passing thought; What we suffer over in any unwanted moment is not the event itself; we suffer over our reaction to the event. The reaction tells us that something outside of us is responsible for the negative experience of the moment.