Think about all the finish lines you've managed to cross in your lifetime where you thought you were an uncontested winner. Let's name a few: "They said I was great!" "She said she loved me!" "I made the deal!" "At last I own what I've always wanted!" "The crisis is over at last." "I beat the odds!" "Now I know I'm a good and wise person." Then comes that untimely, unkind, or unexpected...

As above so below: everything moves in, expresses itself, and grows in cycles. Think of the seasons: in the spring there is new movement, promise, and the advancement of the possibilities formerly at rest. In the summer is the fulfillment of these possibilities. Come the fall, natural forces subside; there is a reversal in the direction of energies. Enter the winter, and movement halts; everyt...

Since I have begun to learn to stay quiet and observe thoughts and see them for what they truly are, I have been set free from several vices I had previously "thought" I would die with. This happened quite effortlessly, and I know in my heart that I have found Truth. When I attempted to tell a Christian friend of mine of the freedom that I have experienced as a result of "letting go," he becam...

Topics covered:  Most of us don't know anything at all about our obsessions. When a person is obsessed with something, he or she sees it as natural and necessary; Life is intended to be simple. Everything that is perceived as being difficult is, in reality, simple for the level of understanding that sees from a higher perspective; The Kingdom of Heaven is within. It is not out there in the world of thought and its temporary creations.

Topics covered: The purpose of spiritual studies is not to create a new identity. The purpose is to change. But why is it so hard to change? Part of the problem is that we don't know what real change is; Real change is always due to a revelation, a shock that shows us a part of ourselves that doesn't want to change. Shocks reveal everything that is not real change but claims to be...

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 w...

Featured Study Group Topic for the Week of November 7, 2016. The effort to remain inwardly awake, the work to be grounded in the present moment, is not to put away some pain that may be troubling you. The act of being "in Presence" - the attention required to do so -- is to make possible the following revelation, including its self-liberating realization: the negative experience of any given m...

Although self-study may include reading certain inner life books or listening to lectures on self-transformation, these materials, as encouraging and informative as they may be, are really only preparational tools; they have their place. After all, if you were going to climb a mountain, you would want expert advice on the proper equipment to use, and you would want instruction from others who...

There can be no starting place in our lives any truer than what our own awareness of the present moment permits. This friendly fact tells us that our life direction, our actual destiny, is determined by the level of our awareness that attends the full range of each step we take. The next two examples prove this insight beyond the calling of any logic. No one consciously takes a step in haste...

Guy Finley talks about the nature within us that seeks to condemn us even as it excuses what "it" has done. Whenever we are able to observe these two opposites simultaneously, a third force is awakened. This third force, which is higher awareness, holds the opposites and is perfect reconciliation.

One maxim of self-development I sense is true is that the way out of any stressful situation is to "go through it." How does this approach apply to reducing stress-producing thought-attacks? Everything depends upon our ability to inwardly discriminate between thoughts and feelings that are for us as opposed to those that are against us. Whenever confronted with an onslaught of internal i...

Classroom Talk: 10/26/2025 -The Real Gift of Life is the grace to see that each moment -- inseparable from our awareness of it -- is always complete in and of itself. And further, that whenever we act as a silent witness to that revelation -- quietly observing whatever new form of life is conceived within it -- we too are completed and renewed, accordingly.