Student Talks: 8/11/2023 - Key Lesson: Part 1: There is no relief from the conflict and grief born of unrealized self-ignorance, which is why it's wise to seek self-knowledge. Part 2: The hardest thing in the world is to quietly do what life asks of you; but, if you attend to this first, Divine desire, all else is added... and you "shall not want."

Topics covered: Review of the Friday night exercise; There are parts of you that are dedicated to defeating your higher intentions; Desire is the root of identification, which attracts unwanted events; The whole of the universe is established to help you enjoin a relationship with the divine; The act of setting an intention produces second force; You should get to know every single voice that...

Topics covered: Desire promises to deliver us to a higher place but because it originates from a lower place it can't connect to what's higher; Choose presence over fantasy; You must learn to stay in one place (psychologically) long enough to study yourself; Change is not possible without revelation; No one can be reborn until they die; Nothing grows stronger without resistance; It's only when...

Persistent painful problems in life are born out of one essential weakness: our inability to direct and keep our attention on what we choose to be in relationship with in the moment.

All the many years of my first marriage, I showed one face for outside and another for inside so that I would not get into trouble. I know we shouldn't blame anyone else for our mistakes, but I did anything to keep the peace. Now I have a chance to meet someone else but I have no desire to lie, cheat, and deceive again. My trust has gone out the window. How do I start over and give this love a...

Topics covered: We cannot add anything to what we already are by pursuing what we want; There can be nothing more upside-down than people being unable to see that their life is being given to them; "Hope in things seen" is the same as hope in a time to come. Wanting (and not wanting) is always in time; There is a wisdom that transcends desire; Whatever state you find yourself in...

Classroom Talk: 7/28/2021 - Along the interior path, the aspirant must face what seems many separate temptations; but, in truth, there is but one. In the end, the root of temptation is the desire to see and to feel oneself as being "special"... the cost of which is to be thrown into conflict with anyone, or anything that threatens this image. Self-liberation is seeing this conflict for what it is...

Topics Covered: Discussion about the lunch exercise; All untethered boats eventually sink; Every light eventually goes out; Without attention there is no connection; God is not in touch with humanity, he's in touch with a few individuals who are in touch with humanity; You are the hope of the world; Desire is not love; We're not meant to spend our lives serving ourselves; The man or woman at p...

Topics covered: You can't have less or more than you are; This work isn't for you, it's about being and doing what you're given to do by the divine; There's no such thing as elevation without correction; This work is about expiring all of the possibilities given to you by desire; Wanting to feel special is born of imitation; Self-knowledge, which is inseparable from love, casts out fear.

Featured Study Group Topic for the Week of July 23, 2013. Part 1: Being in any kind of painful rush is what happens every time you feel as if you're late for a very important date with something you've imagined won't wait for you to get there. Part 2: Here's why nothing you rush to do can ever truly satisfy you: no nature on fire can extinguish its own desire.

Topics covered: A sense of self is created from comparison to the past or future; Awakening is the continual discovery that something acts in your stead if you're not there; Awakening doesn't glorify the self awakening; Illumination is not the enlargement of 'I'; 'I am' is a setup for self-protection; No sense of 'I' exists without relationship; Desire has a proper function in supporting creat...

One virtually unknown aspect of love -- and, in a way, one that is most vital to your inner growth -- is found not in correcting the path of others, but rather...