The real reason we stress ourselves over the way others behave -- and are so quick to judge them for their irritating behavior -- is as follows: by blaming others for how we feel in the moment . . . then our negative state is always the fault of someone else.

Topics covered: Part of your spiritual work is to see that you do not know what your best interests really are; The conditions in life that seem to oppose us have actually appeared in order to help us realize our best interests; A negative reaction looks outside of itself in order figure out what condition or person should be blamed for its pain; The very act of blaming the condition you don't want strengthens the consciousness that created those conditions...

Evil transforms suffering into unconscious acts of blame, bitterness, and self-pity -- harmful forces that punish everyone; while the Good transforms these same dark states into conscious suffering -- creating humility that heals whomever it touches.

Part I: Those pointed negative states that jump out of us whenever we rush to blame someone else for our pain are always dead-end streets whose one-way signs deceptively read: This way out! Part II: In a heated moment of a trial with someone else, instead of struggling in vain to get him or her to see the lesson in it for them, we should learn to ask ourselves, "What is the hidden lesson in...

Any moment of real change is the past made perfect through the reconciliation of the will of Heaven acting upon the will of earth, and in that union creating the birth of a brand-new creature. Any moment of real change is the past made perfect. Not the past reconfigured, disguised as some new plan, but the past made perfect - and the past is made perfect in this intersection of what is perfectly celestial and timeless in its activity working upon...

Part 1 Whoever would set blame upon another for feeling misunderstood, or who becomes bitter towards those thought to have let him down, has failed to realize the following self-liberating truth: the first root of sorrow in this life is not for what others have or have not done to us. Our suffering over the "shortcomings" of others is nothing less than the stuff of what we have yet to und...

Anytime you blame someone else for how you feel, you avoid seeing your pain is self-inflicted by a level of consciousness that lives to have enemies.

Anger, fear, and resentment, are not the bitter leftovers of whatever we might want to blame for having wrecked our life. These states are a storm in themselves, and to see them as such is the first step towards anchoring the vessel of our soul in a safe harbor.

Each person is created with the tools it takes to master his or her own life. But self-mastery remains the ultimate mystery until that day dawns when -- weary of struggling to overcome what he blames for his conflicted self -- he lets go and enters into this darkened nature by becoming completely still. And by this stillness, he tames its wildness; and through this stillness he is given domini...

Topics covered: self-punishment, self-sabotage, blame, illusions, selfishness, solutions, sarcasm, wit...

Classroom Talk: 6/9/2002 - The temptation to blame another for your pain must be recognized as a secret prelude to self-punishment, and it will be, once we awaken to the truth that the nature that wants to condemn someone has first unconsciously condemned itself.