Student Talks

Student Talks: 6/10/2022 - Key Lesson: Realized or not... our path (through life) is largely set by unseen parts of ourselves, and we tend to blindly follow wherever they lead. Only the realization of this fact has the power to change the kind of actions we take, beginning with the choices that initiate them; where rather than struggling to come up with the right way to answer any "disturbing" moment...

Student Talks: 6/3/2022 - Key Lesson: When it comes to developing a living relationship with the Divine, good intentions cost nothing, which is why the road to hell is paved with useless coins. On the other hand, making conscious efforts comes with the cost of encountering the reality of our present level of being; of seeing what we are actually capable of doing, and what we are not...

Student Talks: 5/27/2022 - Key Lesson: Part 1 – That we should search only our own conscience for confirmation of what is good and true, this is the best definition of integrity. For that which is good and true is not social in nature, but spiritual in need and in deed. Part 2: Here is an enigma wrapped in a paradox: we cannot buy the love of the Divine; no good deed can produce the Presence...

Student Talks: 5/20/2022 - Key Lesson: The wind that fills the sails of a ship is born of a coming storm... as is each tempest the herald of the calm waters that follow its wrath. In this knowledge is found the key to conscious detachment, the power of an impersonal life.

Student Talks: 5/13/2022 - Key Lesson: As long as our reactions are seen as choices, and the "voices" that support them as thoughts of our own, it doesn't matter what we call our life... any more than calling a circle a straight line changes the fact that all it does is go round and round.

Student Talks: 5/6/2022 - Key Lesson: Part 1: Until we can see that unconscious identification sits at the root of all useless suffering nothing real can change for us -- let alone within us -- save for what we're moved to imagine -- and then identify with -- as the next new solution to our pain. Part 2: False 'I' is a disease. Real I is the healing. Awakening is the prescription...

Student Talks: 4/29/2022 - Key Lesson: It is a distinct stage in the development of the aspirant when -- rather than being easily distracted by some imagined consolation for his pain, or by concluding who is to blame for it -- his first and real preference in that dark moment is to increase his awareness of his condition, and not to find ways around it.

Student Talks: 4/22/2022 - Key Lesson: There is a very strange feature as concerns most human beings: we would rather feel anxious thinking about unwanted moments over which we have no power, than to practice placing our attention in the fact of that moment... where no thought is needed to build a bridge between ourselves, and a timeless peace whose Presence all of us seek.

Student Talks: 4/15/2022 - Key Lesson: The Unknowable Source of Peace in real life far exceeds our reach... because it can't be grasped, let alone taken by hand; it can only be received by a heart that has willingly emptied itself of hope in all things seen.

Student Talks: 4/8/2022 - Key Lesson: Practicing the Presence -- working to remember the truth of yourself -- doesn't necessarily change the kind of events that come to you; that's not how it works. But, what your inner work does change is for whom -- upon what 'I' -- will these events fall and, accordingly, the purpose they serve.

Student Talks: 4/1/2022 - Key Lesson: Attention touches whatever level of being into which it reaches. Sustained attention connects these levels and, if maintained, allows for an exchange of energy between them. Consistent connectivity permits and gradually grows into a form of systemic symmetry, until all levels involved are permanently integrated.

Student Talks: 3/18/2022 - Key Lesson: Part 1: By wanting are all things not wanted... thus created; much as joy and sorrow, bound as one... are related. Part 2: If you build it, they will come; if you leave it empty... it will be filled.