Topics covered: The real secret of letting go is to discover for yourself that there is a completely different order of understanding in which there is necessary practical struggle, without the useless struggle of trying of bringing an end to your pain; The world believes that it is natural to worry. There is another order of being that does not have in it any lingering negative states like worry...

Topics covered: When we try to avoid the consequences of our choices, we believe that the best thing to do is to make more choices that lead to more unwanted consequences; Conflict in consciousness is always a war between what it wants and what it does not want, along with its identification with those desires; You can't have a fear that isn't born out of a desire that you have identified with...

Classroom Talk: 11/27/2024 - I've been a pirate...looting the hearts of any I could board and pillage for my pleasure. I've been a priest...consoling, and confusing any I could deceive and profit from by my practiced piety. I've been anyone...that everyone wanted me to be: I've danced for a drink, and lied without hesitation to ensure others my word is good. The truth is I've been everyone...but myself.

Topics covered:  You are never going to have a life that is completely free of troubles, but you can understand the nature of those troubles; Letting go has nothing to do with what the mind points to as the source of its pain; If you are not in contact with your body, then you are only in contact with thoughts and the sensations that are produced by identifying with them.

Topics covered:  Our mind is always struggling with what is happening because it does not match up with what it believes should be happening. As a result, we see everything as being flawed; Presently our lives are predicated upon struggling to get others to see life the way we do; Being spiritually asleep, resistance becomes our chief advisor, telling us what we have to do in order to get rid of the pain of unwanted moments.

Topics covered:  One particularly pervasive lie in our culture is that we believe that we are only as valuable as other people see us as being; Until what is concealed in us is revealed, it can never be healed; "This above all: to thine ownself be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man." -- William Shakespeare

Topics covered: The only thing we know to do in unwanted moments is to reject them, and then listen for guidance from the part of us that responds in that way; In a disturbing moment, the resistance that comes up -- the onset of it -- is not yours; How many times are you going to struggle with fear, anxiety, depression, anger, and every other negative state?

Topics covered: Struggling to get what you want always sets you against other human beings; "For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers." -- New Testament; Not wanting a condition is the same as struggling to control the condition you don't want; Some moments are as painful as they are because you have an idea that they should not be that way. The real source of conflict is your ideas of what you want...

Topics covered: You are tired because you think yourself into exhaustion; One of the pitfalls along the way is that our minds are starving for things to think about; The purpose of a spiritual school is not to give you something new to think about. The purpose is to show you the need to point your attention in another direction; Familiarity breeds contempt. Boredom is built into identification...

Topics covered: The only thing that sleeping human beings see are the reasons -- outside of themselves -- for their anxiety, anger, fear and negativity; It seems mandatory to have enemies because that nature feels as though everyone and everything is pressing-in on it; What we presently call love is dependent upon outside conditions giving us what we want; The real golden rule is: Don't do to others what you don't want done to you...

Topics covered: There is an interior sanctuary that awaits human beings if they will only follow the breadcrumbs of truth that lead them there; There is nothing within thought that can satisfy the soul that hungers for what is true. What we really hunger for already exists; How often have we filled ourselves with things outside of ourselves -- including images produced by our own mind -- that turn out to be futile?

Topics covered: When you see the truth of something, there is no judgment or negativity in it. Real knowledge might have sorrow in it, but never anger or violence; Every time that you identify with a thought, you are actually praying for the experience that you don't want; You could not have so many things that you don't want without comparison; The only thing that you suffer over psychologically is what you know...