Experience proves that whatever we seek to end usually lingers all the longer, which is why we must learn the Way to grant negative states their safe passage through us -- in spite of the temporary pain that always attends their appearance.

Classroom Talk: 5/21/2004 - We spend so much of our time thinking and re-thinking about how to succeed with our personal escape plans that -- for these same dreams of a freedom to come -- it never has a chance to dawn on us that our True Nature cannot be made a prisoner of anything!

Truthful ideas never need to be validated by others; they neither fear close scrutiny, nor avoid the light of any moment that calls for it. False ideas can never stand alone; they tremble whenever life questions their intelligence, mistaking the sudden onset of painful resistance as proof of their strength.

We want to be free of painful reactions, but (unknowingly) resist the realization of our role in their annoying repetition; this awakening is a mandatory interim stage...

No relationship in life can be any more successful than what we are willing to learn about ourselves through it. The moment we turn our back on what others give us to see about ourselves, we not only walk away from what we need to see, but also from the better person we could be...were we only willing to learn the lesson at hand.

Topics covered:  For all of the possessions that we have, we do not have peace. You cannot possess real peace, and yet you can never lose it; What deceives you into seeking peace promises peace in a time to come after you have obtained what it has prescribed. We become obsessed with the peace that we imagine is coming; "You will look for me, but you will not find me; and where I am, you cannot come." -- New Testament

Painful reactions are born of an unseen resistance (to life). This means our suffering isn’t created by the situation blamed for it, rather it is the negative effect of identifying with a lower level of consciousness...

Have you ever wondered why deer, squirrels, birds, and other wild animals in nature seem so tense? Many wild animals are skittish and high-strung because that is their nature. They require this natural tension for the protection and preservation of their species. When it comes to human beings, we have wrongly come to rely upon an unnatural tension as a requirement for our own psychological pre...

Most of us are certain that the reason we are upset in any given situation is because of what someone else has done or not done. In general, our day-to-day interactions with other human beings are tainted with some kind of conflict, whether it is in the form of an outwardly expressed war or an inwardly suppressed resentment. There is a passage in scripture that says, "Physician, heal thyself.

We rarely see when we take the path of least resistance in life -- that low road called "guaranteed to go nowhere" -- because of how immediately we identify with the legion of thoughts and feelings that always appear in that same moment of our suffering to justify the "choices" we make to escape it.