Classroom Talk: 08/23/2026 - The divided, sleeping mind meets and measures each new moment by recollecting what it remembers about it. In this way, it never meets a moment it hasn’t already decided is good or bad, wanted or not.

Trying to be something that I am not, or loathing myself for imagined shortcomings is born of resistance, the root of reincarnating all that I wish to no longer be; dying to myself begins with returning to myself – with being what I am – nothing more, nothing less.

Topics covered:  We always find fault with what captures us instead of finding fault with what got captured. "The fox condemns the trap, not himself." -- William Blake; In the same instant that we identify with what we believe will make us whole, there is fear that we will lose it. Then we set out to protect what we have identified with; How can we be immersed in suffering and yet not know anything about it? We don't question our suffering; we question what we believe is the source of it.

Topics covered: Attempting to save yourself is the same as imagining about a better time to come; There is no such self that goes by your name that can do the good, which you then punish yourself for not being able to do; You never sincerely ask the question "Why am I afraid?" Instead, you are given answers as to what the source of the fear is outside of yourself.

Being fully present to oneself is freedom from the tyranny of the past and fear of the future.

There can be no painful resistance to any moment of life that isn't born of some unseen form of insistence that it unfold only as we've imagined it should...

We may pity the hamster on its wheel in a cage, perhaps even feeling superior to such a clueless creature that keeps running in the same place, going nowhere with no clue of its captive state. But the fact is -- and may God help us to see it as so -- there is little difference between this hamster wheel and the "wheel" of negative thoughts and feelings that, on one hand, tell us how to escape...

Classroom Talk: 4/2/2003 - We cannot stop life from happening, but never recognize this fact, because each time we try (to stop it) all we manage to do is succeed in starting up the machinery of our own misery, and then we mistake this aching for the proof of our power.

Until we learn how to look upon adversity in life as being our secret benefactor, then all that we identify with -- as good fortune -- must, in time, assume the role of being our antagonist; for nothing in this world is constant except for the play of the opposites, the nature that sustains them, and the higher awareness of both.

Part 1 The avoidance of any form of psychological pain -- no matter how cleverly construed, or thoroughly masked -- is not the same as freedom from its suffering. Part 2 Nothing is more empty of higher possibilities than a mind filled with resistance to the revelations of life.

Making the wise choice to release one's resistance to some unwanted moment does more than just change the perceived tide of events; it proves that we're never too far from the open inlet of a safe harbor whose deep and quiet waters shelter all who enter.

Whatever seems impossible, or otherwise impassible in life is inseparable from the extent of our resistance to it; a fear inherent in the way we’re conditioned to see such moments...