We can never hope to be free as long as any part of us struggles with, or suffers over what others are doing, have done, or won't do with their lives. Besides, if we could remain aware of the often-compromised state of our own character, that is, how we still do those things to others that we don't want to do, this awakened conscience would stir in us a new need. Rather than worrying about whether so-and-so gets his comeuppance for being the...

Classroom Talk: 11/7/2003 - The next time someone is cruel to you, remember this truth: what just clawed out at you is that person's pain -- and before it started tearing into you, it had already torn that poor person apart. This special kind of remembrance helps cancel the cycle of conflict, because we will not lash out at another whom we can see is already suffering. True compassion takes root in the ground of such higher understanding.

We see others tell themselves lies to explain their obvious negative reactions and attending self-destructive choices, almost never missing the chance to sit in silent judgment of them...

Classroom Talk: 3/16/2003 - If we could only remember in those unwanted moments -- when we see where we have been wrong in life -- that this vision is granted us because we have just been visited by some New Light by which to see and know ourselves more truly, then one day we might come to welcome what now seems so unwanted. What does it take to welcome every moment of one's life? Love the Light! 

The real underlying limitation in our relationships is rooted in how we look at and think about others who are in our life. But, perhaps more accurately stated: the real problem we have with others is what we don't yet see and understand about ourselves!

All of our relationships exist for a single beautiful purpose that expresses itself in two different ways: 1) everyone and everything is in our life to help us grow; and 2) everyone and everything is also there in our life to help us see everything in us that now stands in the way of our realizing this same higher possibility.

Before we can hope to shatter the pattern of familiar conflicts in our relationships, we need a new level of understanding to take with us into those same moments.

Classroom Talk: 5/6/2020 - We cannot keep trying to "delight" ourselves, and develop ourselves -- spiritually -- at the same time, any more than we can have our cake and eat it too. But once we understand that the work of developing our soul is the only pleasure that never turns into some painful opposite... then our life becomes delightful...

The stress we feel over our possessions or in our relationships -- that sneaks in to steal our contentment -- is never because of the way in which these things (themselves) are made to turn, but it is the dark effect of how tightly we cling to the idea that our desires have the power to grant us peace.

It is a great mystery that through our many individual relationships we grow into the realization that there has always and only been one Relationship, and one Self, and that this Supreme Nature only appears to be divided into parts much in the same way single raindrops are substance of the seas.

Most people want very much to be strong, but they do not seem to be able to find the real strength they yearn for.