Topics Covered: Thoughts are the past; Thoughts are always incomplete; Be the witness of the judging consciousness; Seeing is not the same as thinking; Who and what you really are is immeasurable; Measuring yourself is misery; See what it is like to complain all the time; Real consciousness will not contradict itself; We do not escape a fear, we see through it; The present moment is...

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...

Not long ago I lost my wife of many years to cancer. I am certain that was the beginning of my spiritual awakening. I read in a book of Jewish wisdom a phrase written by a rabbi who said: When you lose a parent you lose the "past." When you lose a spouse you lose the "present." When you lose a child you lose the "future." Where in the realm of the power of "now" does that place the loss of my...

Every shocking revelation we are given to see, and to realize (if we will) as true about our present nature is -- at its heart -- an unseen act of mercy...

We must look upon our knowledge of others who have hurt us as a special kind of doorway, and not as a potential psychological weapon. To use it as a doorway means that we can learn how to walk past the parts of us that want to punish others for their act of ignorance against us. And we are helped to make this more compassionate choice by our remembrance that the first person to be injured by a...

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: Each negative state that we currently act from comes with an incredibly strong sense of self whenever that weakness appears. The real root of the weakness is the identification with the state; We draw a strong sense of self from the very weakness that we say we wish to be from from. There is an addiction to resisting the weakness; There is nothing real that happens when we revisit the past...

Topics Covered: What is my original true self; We live in a world where nothing is new; Your life is a ceaseless outpouring of thought; Thought is a disturbance; You can't have a new thought; There is no "you" and no past in what's new; The definition of a mediocre aspirant; If I'm not present, I'm being "eaten" by thoughts and daydreams; If you don't want to be taken over by a negative state...

Topics covered: The value of personal prayer; How do we stay present; Are disturbances the same as sensations; How do I handle a confrontational situation; I feel inadequate to overcome my negative states; What is undivided awareness; Is it true that any sense of 'I' is false; Why was I born; I've noticed that past memories don't bother me as much as they used to; Interpretation of Christ's wo...

Topics covered: The cost of freedom is letting go of the idea that there is a "you" that is going to find freedom in a time to come; It is not life that is hard, but there is something in us that has hardened itself against life; Your mind will never be able to take you past the point that it cannot go, but your mind can understand that fact; Every desire has a corresponding identity attached to it...

Topics explored in this dialogue: We're here to grow into all that we can be, and grow out of what is no longer needed; The principle source of our fear is the certainty that what we fear is greater than we are; Pain is the proof that you are clinging to something past its value; In the moment when all seems lost, the task is to remember who you truly are in that moment, instead of allowing th...

Any conscious effort in life is always rewarded with increased consciousness.