Classroom Talk: 2/27/2022 - Here is the real reason why so very few ever realize a conscious relationship with the Divine: higher Love is consummated only in the awareness and acceptance of one's own spiritual poverty... so that one's soul is slowly matured through an ever-deepening humility that is, itself, the doorway to Heaven.

Classroom Talk: 6/18/2004 - If we would examine closely the strands of those unseen webs that seem to catch and hold us captive every day, we would see that they are nothing more than the stuff of our own thoughts -- spun off by a mind never quite content to be where it is with what it has.

William Shakespeare once said that one sure sign of a spiritually developing mind is its increasing capacity to simultaneously perceive the opposites. The following two Key Lessons from today's Talks in the Pines help clarify this vital thought: Once we understand that all forces – even the seemingly contradictory ones – are secretly complementary, we are well on our way to realizing the s...

In the competitive and complex worlds of business and science, imagination is critical to the processes of creativity. It serves a valuable and practical purpose. New developments are created by imagining better ways to improve old technologies. Important developments come in increments. Progress moves ahead one step at a time. But in our inner life, we don't want a continuation of *what has...

The only power any illusion has over us is our unconscious belief in it...which makes our task clear: we must work (within ourselves) to uncover those parts of our present nature that want us to see what is false as being true. And this we can do by remembering, moment to moment, to place our need for the light of higher awareness before our desire to blindly pursue, or cling to, what seems li...

Whenever we find ourselves identified with some dark stream of thoughts and feelings, as opposed to being quietly aware of their downward-trending presence, we fall -- in that same moment -- into a world filled with unwanted negative states. The reason so much of what's going on within and around us seems "bad" is because that's all we can see. Just as beauty is in the eye of the beholder, s...

We are never more alone than when surrounded by those dark thoughts and feelings that gather together to throw us a pity party!...

Topics covered: Whatever you deny in life is secretly the denial of revelation of yourself. Resisting the moment kills the possibility of revelation; When you deny/resist something in life, that thing is perceived as being your enemy; Fear does not exist apart from the nature that fears it. Fear is a mutually dependent relationship, in that fear cannot exist without a fearful self...

The real reason people remain captives of unwanted circumstances in their lives is because they've yet to realize this great spiritual secret: Resistance is negative attraction. In other words: the longer we dwell on what we don't want in life, the larger grows that dark dwelling place in which we find ourselves living. ~~~ You need not answer to any disturbance within you. Any form of res...

Classroom Talk: 11/3/2002 - Freedom follows the discovery that whatever it is within us that compels us to achieve can never itself be made content by achievement.

Classroom Talk: 9/26/2003 - Here is a tough spiritual lesson, but one that must be learned before we free ourselves from the circle of false friends: There was once a sheep who kept crying out, "Why do the wolves chase me, bite at my heels, and want to hurt me so?" The Shepherd smiled and replied: "Why do you like to wander through the woods where they live, and what makes you think that when another creature shows you its teeth that it's smiling at you?"