Classroom Talk: 6/30/2002 - Part 1: 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 2: 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 God. Reach for His Life...

Topics covered:  The mind never stops thinking about the experience it is having in the moment, and its experience is the product of thinking; Thought is always telling us the meaning of the moment. The real meaning from the moment cannot be separated from the moment itself. The moment IS the meaning; The life we are seeking -- the freedom and peace we are looking for -- is not waiting for us in a time to come after we have achieved something.

Topics covered: It is an illusion to believe that there is a moment coming in the future in which you will gain the control you need in order to feel at peace; You can never be free from fear as long as you see life as the source of your fear; We are looking for, and have a need for, a higher life that we cannot find in this world. The life that we find in this world will eventually be taken away.

Topics covered: You give yourself to what you love; We are drawn to what is active in us; What it means to let go; Understanding can't be acted upon until there's something in you that's able to do it; Love is not in time; Thinking from the pain vs. toward the pain; Learn to love Truth even when you don't know what Truth is; Peace is not the effect of an action; Everything that shows me where...

If we are truthful about our life experience though, it is obvious that as long as we believe we have something to lose because of our identification with any temporary exterior condition or circumstance, we remain subject to every outer condition.

No moment can be different than it is. We can't change a moment that comes. The moment (and its content) appears from within us, before us, and we are relegated to being able to see it but not to change the very thing that we're looking at as it appears. So that whether we like it or not actually means nothing.

If only we would cease giving others Reasons to resist our presence, Bear ourselves With what we burden them, Leaving no reason for blame . . . Then . . . that great silent rage Hidden in the human heart Would have to be seen for what it is: Violence looking for a war. Such a discovery would awaken Within the discerning soul The immediate, most intimate need To be the emb...

Whoever doesn't know the truth of himself, suffers uselessly for the sake of ignorance. Whoever works to know the truth of Self, agrees to suffer ignorance for the sake of Wisdom. Becoming wise, he "slays" the lower self, as well as its suffering. And in having transcended the useless suffering born of self-ignorance -- and the death it leads to -- he shares in the birth and burden of creation...

Topics covered: A sleeping human being is anyone who has made peace with the pain that promises to leave them alone in a future time to come when conditions finally change in their favor; When you have pain in your life, you turn to yourself because you do not know what else to turn to, and your solution provides a temporary consolation at best; The part of you that tells you what to do about the conditions or people that are bullying you around...

Topics covered:  We keep reaching out into the world for what seems to be missing because we are not at peace with ourselves as we are; Whenever we are looking to distract ourselves, there is an unseen hope that we will find a lasting refuge of some kind. We are hoping to find some kind of relief from feelings of dissatisfaction; The nature that feels dissatisfied and incomplete will find ways to create dependency in others so that it can feel momentarily significant.

Classroom Talk: 11/14/2018 - Here is why rushing from place to place -- from thought to thought -- is the same as going nowhere at all: in one's constant haste to reach the end of some self-spun story -- where he dreams he will, at last, claim the peace he imagines awaits him there -- he runs right by the truth he must see...that is, if he wishes to be set free: there is no story he can tell himself that doesn't develop,...

There is no distance, no time or space in seeing what is; And what is speaks for itself, which means no thought is required to understand what is being revealed in the space of some troubling time...