Topics covered:  When I am caught up in some conflict in my life, I unconsciously turn to the nature responsible for that conflict to end it, but it can't do it; "The way the wise man became wise is that he stopped answering his own questions." -Vernon Howard; The answer I come up with to address a problem may temporarily resolve it or give me a way to navigate around it, but I keep coming back to the same problems, which means the consciousness that created them never changed.

Classroom Talk: 2/8/2025 - Pretending to be a loving person, while inwardly being resentful, is pain; A nice deep breath will always help you to digest more of the many impressions that are raining down on you; The secret source of our painful, ongoing imperfections is our fear of them; We don't see the judgment in ourselves because we are identified with what we are judging; Creation is an unfinished business...

Classroom Talk: 8/3/2025 - Given the values of the world in which we live today, it's no small wonder that the first of the beatitudes -- "Blessed are the poor in spirit" -- more often than not proves itself a painful paradox regarding the notion of real wealth; for the truth is -- as Christ taught -- that the less we take ourselves to be, the more we're given to discover all that we are, and forever will be.

Topics covered:  Demands, and the sense of self that come with them, are blind because they mistake the part for the whole, incapable of seeing the bigger picture; Parables and teaching stories are able to communicate truths to us in ways that other means of communication cannot; In the story of the King looking for a new Governor for the Kingdom of Agape, most of the candidates were self-serving motives and full of demands, seeking more power and authority. The one who was selected said, "How can I be useful to you? How can I best serve what it is that you Will for the Kingdom?"

Student Talks: 8/8/2025 - Given the values of the world in which we live today, it's no small wonder that the first of the beatitudes -- "Blessed are the poor in spirit" -- more often than not proves itself a painful paradox regarding the notion of real wealth; for the truth is -- as Christ taught -- that the less we take ourselves to be, the more we're given to discover all that we are, and forever will be.

Student Talks: 07/04/2025 - What is True is quiet; it is at peace with itself, whatever it silently reveals. What is untrue has no such peace; it is unable to be silent. What is True has no need to think about, let alone talk to itself about any lie it may see. What is untrue can't stop talking to itself in order to cover up what it doesn't want to see, ceaselessly telling itself that it sees truly.

Topics covered:  So much of the pain that we have in life is not because of what life present to us. The pain is in our ambition to prove that we are what we have imagined ourselves to be; Real life is a process of discovery. Real discovery is not the enlargement of oneself. Rather, it is the realization that real life is immeasurable; We have a perpetual internal scoreboard that is always measuring how we are doing in the moment. It doesn't want to come out of the moment thinking that it has lost. It wants other people to know that they have lost. It is a set of eyes that measures life instead of meeting it.

Topics covered:  The only way you will know the whole story of your life is if you participate in the Life that gives your life to you; "For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do." -- New Testament. St. Paul was saying that we are involuntarily committed to a will that hurts itself because it cannot see itself. We would not be the involuntary instrument of that will if we knew we were doing it; The nature that reacts to the moment we don't want was there before the moment we didn't want. So what is it really that does not want the moment?

Topics covered:  "Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it." -- New Testament; Nothing in nature grows in a straight line. There is no straight line because there is always a creative force is acting upon the new creation. The force of creation, nor the creation that it is acting upon, are ever the same; The negative states that seem to come out of nowhere will tell you the reasons for their appearance, which always includes some form of "I'm innocent, you're guilty." Negative reactions will tell you why you are the way you are.

Classroom Talk: 03/23/2025 - We can be -- and often are -- sound asleep going through the motions of life with our eyes wide open. To be able to see — to be aware of - what our mind is actually looking at, experiencing, and responding to…is the first step in the process of awakening; it not only strengthens our wish to attend to the present moment, but to remember that any time our mind is unattended…it slumbers in fitful dreams, from which it cannot awaken itself. 

Student Talks: 3/28/2025 - We can be -- and often are -- sound asleep going through the motions of life with our eyes wide open. To be able to see — to be aware of - what our mind is actually looking at, experiencing, and responding to…is the first step in the process of awakening; it not only strengthens our wish to attend to the present moment, but to remember that any time our mind is unattended…it slumbers in fitful dreams, from which it cannot awaken itself. 

Student Talks: 2/28/2025 - The vast majority of humanity views the idea of spiritual rebirth as some sort of prize to be claimed and declared: a new and exciting personal possession, like having won a tropical island in a high-stakes lottery. But true rebirth is nothing of the kind; (it is) a distinct awareness within oneself of a timeless and intelligent awareness -- a fearless and abiding patience, burgeoning with expectation -- that is "in the world (of passing time), but not of it."