Student Talks: 1/19/2024 - Key Lesson: The greatest possibility for acquiring the Divine energy required to facilitate the transformation of oneself is found only in the moments of higher awareness that, itself, can only be realized in the same time and place of one's greatest resistance to that moment.
Topics Covered: Every mechanical psychological reaction is ignorance passing itself off as intelligence; There is no intelligence in an unconscious, mechanical reaction; There is no finding liberation through avoidance; Our habitual reaction in an unwanted moment is inseparable from the painful pattern that the reaction blames and resists; Something in us always knows what it wants...
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...
Topics covered: The unconscious mind tries to regain balance whenenver it registers a disturbance that interferes with its agenda; The distractions we turn to in order to escape the feeling of emptiness are created by the consciousness that must fill itself in order to know itself; Humanity's imagined heaven is the invention of a consciousness that is in hell; If you are still anxious and afraid...
Topics covered: If you respond to a truth that you have read or heard, it is because there is a corresponding part in you that is a reflection of that truth; Resistance comes before any negative reaction. And the source of unconscious resistance is unconscious comparison; Whatever it is that resists any disturbance is already there in our consciousness before the event. The disturbance simply stirs the nature that resists it.
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...
Topics Covered: The world itself is not upside-down. It is the way we see the world that makes it seem upside-down. What is upside-down is a consciousness that only sees what it wants; We are always given everything that we need to be whole, but we are unhappy because we can't see and therefore don't experience that fact; The purpose of your existence cannot be imagined...
Topics Covered: There is no real authority outside of your relationship with the Divine; A longing for the Divine is the need to close the distance between yourself and the Divine; It is impossible to complete ourselves as we imagine in the world of passing time; Time turns worldly ambitions into pain. "Seek ye first the Kingdom of God, and all these things shall be added unto you...
Topics covered: What usually follows a moment of regret is not a change of consciousness, but instead a new set of justifications to explain why we did what we did; We are easily "triggered" because we are loaded with pain, the weight of the past, and we don't know what do to with it; It is impossible to let go with one hand, and hold on with the other. That is not real letting go...
Topics covered: We cannot have a change in life until we have a change in light. Which means that we need a new kind of understanding that allows us to see each moment and our relationship with it; With thought we try to figure out what to do with moments, figure out whether or not we want them, instead of being present to the moment, which includes all the right instructions about any possible actions to take.
Topics covered: We meet life through our understanding of it. If we want to change our experience of life, then we will first need to change our understanding of it; We psychologically chain people to our demands whenever they don't do what we want them to do; Your attention is a form of request. Everything that you attend to, even if you are not aware of it, is a form of prayer...
Student Talks: 3/1/2024 - Key Lesson: Just as the eyes that see the sun cannot understand its light by which they behold the shape and beauty of all things, neither can the heart understand the love that calls it to know and encompass all things. Eye and heart are creatures in time, but Light and Love are not. Even so, all meet; and to be a silent witness to their inexpressible union... is to realize the pathless journey to the indwelling Divine.