Topic: End the Unseen Suffering Inherent in Seeking an "Entitled" Life (8/28/19 Classroom Talk)

Topic: End the Unseen Suffering Inherent in Seeking an "Entitled" Life (8/28/19 Classroom Talk)

It’s never Life’s lessons (themselves) that are painful: here’s the real reason why we continue to experience the fear, anger, or anxiety that always seems to attend the appearance of unwanted moments...

Classroom Talk: 8/28/2019 - We cannot separate the pain, the sorrow, nor for that matter, the mounting rage of this world from what amounts to nothing less than our unseen demands upon it.

Topic: Crossroads and Other Signposts Along the Way (Classroom Talk 9/25/24)

No event itself creates anger (in us) any more than a flame causes a moth to fly into it and be consumed. Events serve to reveal specific corresponding qualities in the unexamined depths of our consciousness...

You cannot make yourself whole anymore than a wave can make an ocean. But, you can rise above the waves of frustration, that tempest of anger whose soul-eroding pain would have you believe that you are more than you can be in any given moment.

There is a part of us that wants people to be dependent on us. But the part of us that creates dependency in others is the exact same same thing that creates fear and resentment in us when we imagine that the other person will not behave in the way we want.

Fear and anger -- as is true of all negative states -- are "undercover agents." Their "soul" task, in any moment of conflict with life, is to rush in and cover-up any possible impression that would otherwise reveal we don't possess the "powers" to which we pretend.

Whatever justifies the unconscious suffering inherent in anger, blame, or bitterness is, itself, a part of – in league with - these same negative states. And that's what we have to see if we ever want to be free of whatever it is (within us) that has "good reasons" for tearing itself apart.

Negative states are never positive; they seem to empower us in times of trial, but in truth they blind us, isolate us, and steal from us our right to see that we are never more powerless than when identified with any form of anxiety, anger, or fear.

Classroom Talk: 8/1/2003 - The difference between being angry with ourselves, or at someone else, is found only in the image held in our mind at which we lash out. Either way, the effect of this unconscious fire in us is always the same: It is we who get burned!