Because what is dark, spiritually speaking, can never behold itself...it can only imagine itself. This is its torment; it is, also, strangely enough, the fuel that drives this lower nature through one or the other of its twin, but futile tasks: trying to hide from itself -- by running after some imagined pleasure -- or -- by running away from the pain that appears each time real life challenge...

Part I: It is not silence that quiets the mind being tormented by its own runaway fragmented thinking, it is the love of silence that both heralds the coming of Peace and that stills the soul whom it wraps in its Perfect Wholeness. Part II: When you reach out a hand toward a mirror before you, the hand in that mirror may be seen reaching out for you. So it is with the hand of G...

Part I: Each moment of this life is whole in its presentation. It is not for a treasure hunt but is a Treasure revealed. The self that searches for treasure is tormented by the unseen fact that it can never realize the reality it imagines because the dream always outruns the dreamer. Part II: Any attempt to change your sense of self-discontent by striving to increase possessions, or ot...

Classroom Talk: 6/23/2023 - The size and strength of any anxious, or otherwise tormenting reaction is no bigger or stronger than the extent of our resistance in the moment of its appearance. It's always the shadow we don't want that engulfs us.

Part I: Detect and deliberately drop all fearful thoughts about what "may be" your future and you release yourself from a present torment whose unseen driving force is your consent to consider darkly imagined tomorrows. Part II: We should never measure ourselves according to our "possibilities" because all such estimations of self are always based in secretly embraced evaluation...

Nothing is wrong with desiring financial independence, but this kind of freedom isn't what you really want. What you really want is freedom from a self that torments you each time it compares itself to others it imagines are happier than you are because of what they possess. Truth be known, these people are possessed by a kind of spirit that can never be satisfied, as evidenced by the fa...

Classroom Talk: 8/21/2024 - We end the conflict inherent in reliving any painful memory as we awaken to see that no such time, let alone any tormenting thought associated with it, exists outside of an unseen temptation to identify with - and then relive - the unwanted experience of what we've agreed to remember...again!

Topics covered: Healing begins with self-honesty. No honesty, no healing; The acronym "INASTY" stands for "Instantaneous Negative Assumption Syndrome Tormenting You"; Negative assumptions are closely connection to painful self-protection; When the mind registers a disturbance, it names the disturbance so that it can know what to do about it; Life is disturbance...

Classroom Talk: 8/8/2003 - Just as a swarm of flies that darkens the sky is swept aside by a single breeze, so too can the pervasive negative states that darken one's heart and mind be brushed away -- if we will only dare to come awake to ourselves and ask that tormenting spirit a single question: Upon what is your authority based?

I experience fear on many levels, and in waves that seem to come and go. My rational self feels that everything will be OK and that I am unnecessarily tormenting myself over nothing. I can go from heaven and then back to hell in an instant. There are two men in me: Crazy Man and Spiritual Man. Crazy Man was born, lives crazily... and dies. Spiritual Man was born, lives spiritually... and dies.

Sometimes people with depression have no choice but to "give in" to depression, so don't they need kindness and understanding?...