Whenever we find ourselves running after something -- anything -- to complete us, what is the real nature of this force within us that compels us in this way? We are pushed along in these pursuits by a very subtle, but solid sense of feeling as though we are somehow incomplete.
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Remastered Classic Talk: 7/29/15 - No one can be made stronger that doesn't first agree to meet one's own weakness. No one can become wiser without first agreeing to meet one's own ignorance. But the fact of a transcending strength and wisdom is only proven in the face of weakness and ignorance; which means running away from any painful limitation is the same as agreeing to live as its prisoner. Never forget this one last fact: left unattended, weakness and ignorance grow stronger by themselves.
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Remastered Classic Talk: 6/23/17 -
Part 1: No evil can be done to me save for those moments when -- enmeshed in a forgetfulness not my own -- I can’t remember the Good.
Part 2: The pain of a thousand failed attempts to remember oneself, to put what is true before all else, not only disappears in the flash of each success, but that same light lingers, grows, and eventually comes to outshine the return of any shadow of doubt.
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Remastered Classic Talk: 5/24/17 - Constant inner dialogue -- that infernal internal conversation running through your head -- is the fear-driven manifestation of a lower nature that first imagines a threat of some kind, and that then can't stop talking to itself about how to protect itself from its own dark dream.
When living within the limits of what is known is also seen as being the limitation of your spiritual possibilities, then there is no recourse other than to depart the safety of all that you have been…
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Remastered Classic Talk: 3/01/17 -
Part 1: The purer the reflection, the more immaculate its conception.
Part 2: We are not lifted by our emotions... rather, we are chained to them; we go where they take us. As long as our identity is a derivative of any temporary passion, our sense of self is a by-product of the same... much in the same way as a spark owes its existence to the flame that gives it birth. When the fire dies, so does its heat.
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Remastered Classic Talk: 1/25/17 - Being "clever," or "strong" enough to escape unwanted moments is not the same as escaping the fearful nature within us that creates them. Freedom, real freedom, is not being able to successfully avoid the things we fear; rather, it is the moment-to-moment realization of a relationship with the whole of Life... wherein we can see that who we are, our True Self, has nothing to fear in this world, or in any other.
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Remastered Classic Talk: 5/17/17 -
Part 1: We are told that life is everlasting -- but see that nothing lasts! We are taught there is no death, and yet we see it everywhere around us! We dwell in the middle of an immense contradiction wherein one part of us feels the possibility of a life eternal, but that sees, and fears -- in the same moment -- only the inevitability of the opposite.
Part 2: The Great and Timeless Teaching -- that which can't be taught -- can only be learned through humility.
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Remastered Classic Talk: 5/03/17 - Within each of us dwells a dark and lower nature whose chief feature it is to ensure that the "perfection" of its imagined wants is never called into doubt. Each time we identify with one of its dark dreams -- taking it as our own -- we consent to not only embody the ceaseless hunger of this sleeping self, but also to live with its fear of seeing that it will never be able to complete itself with what it wants.
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Remastered Classic Talk: 11/4/15 - Here is the obvious, but rarely acknowledged reason why we must dig in and do the difficult inner work needed for real self-transformation: if we don't change, we gradually come to wholly embody the very weaknesses whose destructive nature we wish weren't (living) within us. The courage to see the truth of this inevitable outcome gives us the reason, the will and the courage we need to succeed in our quest to regain command over our own heart, mind, and soul.
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Remastered Classic Talk: 8/26/15 - The real thing that's unwanted in any moment is not the event we blame for our pain. The actual source of (our) suffering is in having identified with a negative reaction, and then mechanically resisting this unconscious state now rooted in the darkness of our mind. In other words: resistance is the source of (our) pain, and not the event we blame for it. Once we see our complicity in the creation of these troubled thoughts and feelings... it's not that they go away, but rather that in dropping our identification with them, it is we who are now empowered to depart from their dark world.
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Remastered Classic Talk: 2/15/17 -
Part 1: Behind every expectation that we have for how we should be treated by others lurks the inevitable sense of feeling betrayed by them any time they fail to hit their assigned mark. Behind this disappointment in their character or demeanor -- in fact, its partner in this kind of discrimination -- dwells an unseen sense of righteousness based on a false assumption that we are nothing like what we are so easily moved to judge.
Part 2: It's always the right time to discover something new and true about our present level of being, even if, in that same moment, what we uncover seems altogether wrong.