Remastered Classic Talk: 3/23/16 - Being responsible for our negative reactions begins with becoming aware of them. For instance, until we can observe and learn what it means to be consciously passive to our own negative reactions then what else can we do but go on identifying with them and embracing, by default, the false perception that someone or something else is responsible for our pain.

Classroom Talk: 9/12/2021 - Part 1: What power has any painful moment over us save for having become unconsciously identified with our own negative reaction to it. Seen properly, this means the event we blame for our suffering is like looking in a mirror... and blaming the reflection for whatever we don't want to see in it! Part 2: Our willingness -- and the inner work it takes...

Unless... and until we learn how to be still, and listen to the truth that Life wants us to "hear"... we remain "self-taught" -- caught within, and living as a captive of a lower level of self whose imagined freedom is its prison.

Part 1 Mindfulness is mandatory for anyone wishing to end the misery born of trying – in vain – to fill an empty heart with a string of meaningless experiences. Part 2 We have freedom of choice, but not from the consequences of those choices.

Freedom from self-wrecking behavior must begin with our recognition that we are voluntarily serving that which compromises us, even though we may strongly claim the counter is true. Such a conscious awareness of (this) conflict inherent in our own divided mind may be difficult to endure, but only if we fail to realize this last point: This conscious awareness (and it alone) is the seed of a ne...

Classroom Talk: 5/7/2003 - When we are awakened at night from a nightmare, we realize with a start that we had been sleeping; but when a dark state overcomes us in the daylight hours, we believe we are awake, never suspecting that our bad dream unfolds as it does because we remain asleep within ourselves.

The only conviction a coward has is that someone or something else is responsible for what he refuses to face in himself.

You cannot insulate yourself from life without isolating yourself in the fearful world of those uncertain thoughts and feelings that would convince you it is far better to protect yourself from the unknown that to let go and find freedom within it.

Until the lesson in the repetition of any painful experience is realized as inseparable from the level of consciousness responsible for its reincarnation, there can be no lesson learned, let alone any measure of freedom from all such unwanted moments.

Real life never stops starting over; but, before we can enter into its ceaseless flow and realize its perfect freedom, we must agree to let go of our identification with any past attachments that create a present sense of self.

Classroom Talk: 5/19/2002 - Part 1: It is always the littlest things, the weakest things within us that are the loudest. The false and the fury go hand in hand. What is truly large, great and strong is never outlandish but always forbearing and full of grace. Part 2: The only power of the doer of darkness hidden within us is its uncanny ability to make the miniscule appear mighty, so that for this sleight of hand we see the false as unquestionably fearsome.