Just as we can only move freely in a darkened room when there is light to reveal what surrounds us, so it is with the unseen dimensions within us: in any given moment, we live in a world no larger than the measure of our understanding.

Sensation is but an echo -- a shadow cast by the Real. It belongs to life, yet it is not Life itself. Mistaking sensation for Life... is like mistaking a shadow for the sun whose light lends it form, and from which it has been cast.

We can either spend our lives shaking in fear each time an unwanted moment arrives -- trying to protect ourselves from it -- or we can use that same situation to see through the false self that believes being fearful can lead to the end of being afraid.

All forms of useless suffering are created in a vain attempt to either acquire what we imagine will make us feel complete, or in the equally vain attempt to escape or otherwise control what we perceive is making us feel incomplete, or somehow inadequate.

No matter how challenging the condition may be, regardless how steep the learning curve -- or wide the gap between what you desire to do, and yet cannot -- the first limitation you meet in these moments is always one and the same as an invitation to transcend it. The first imperfection is spiritual self-ignorance.

True serenity, real inner repose is the same as being quietly, consciously, released from a legion of false beliefs... each of which gives rise to an equally false sense of self.

Negative states are never positive; they seem to empower us in times of trial, but in truth they blind us, isolate us, and steal from us our right to see that we are never more powerless than when identified with any form of anxiety, anger, or fear.

Part 1: In any peace we name -- imagine, pursue and then struggle to protect -- lurks a fear that stalks those who dream they can possess what is beyond imagination. Part 2: Before we can hope to enter into the Peace of the Divine Life that dwells within us, we must learn how to search for it in the Light Place.

Nothing we blame for the pain of our anger, anxiety, or fear can ever change their real cause. The true source of our suffering -- individually and collectively -- is an unconscious nature that invents its own enemies, and then suffers in the futile attempt to conquer them... something it can never do, just as it's impossible for a shadow to overcome sunlight.

Learn to answer the true need of the moment by attending only to what it asks of you -- and, inseparable from this new intention, to drop any troubled question posed by a disquieted mind that can't see, let alone realize, how it disturbs itself seeking relief from its own unrest!

The end of suffering is not found in the pursuit of freedom from suffering, but in seeing through the very nature of desire that generates the suffering to begin with. The problem is not what we desire, but the identification with desire itself, and the endless cycle of division it creates.

Remastered Classic Talk: 02/28/2016 - The inevitable sense of emptiness that eventually nips at the heels of most men and women is the sudden realization that in spite of having "banked" a billion self-stimulating sensations -- even when all have been added up -- they still amount to nothing.