Talk Takeaways
The only way you will know the whole story of your life is if you participate in the Life that gives your life to you.
"For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do." -- New Testament. St. Paul was saying that we are involuntarily committed to a will that hurts itself because it cannot see itself. We would not be the involuntary instrument of that will if we knew we were doing it.
The nature that reacts to the moment we don't want was there before the moment we didn't want. So what is it really that does not want the moment?
How are you ever going to be different as long as you continue to serve the will that goes before you to make the straight places crooked?
It is the unconscious mind that imagines strategies to achieve freedom. The strategy becomes the prison.
We presently view the world as a giant supermarket at which we can continue to add to ourselves in order to confirm ourselves as we have imagined.
This world has never gotten better. All the world has done is find more and more clever ways to hide corruption, and the fear that hides behind it.
Fear is always prodding us to become something in order to escape from the very nature that is prodding us on.
Our parents always asked us, "What do you want to be?" They never asked us, "Who do you want to be? What kind of person do you want to be?"
We have an infinite capacity for perfect similarity. There is also an infinite capacity for conflict for the lower nature that rejects the revelation of similarity.
"Let the dead bury the dead." The dead are those who suffer over dead images from the past, along with the sense of self that tries to keep those dead images alive.
What is in the past is dead, but the self tries to bring the past back to life in order to keep itself alive. Every identification with a thought about the past produces a corresponding sense of self.
Every 'I' that comes out of identifying with a thought about the past is an opportunity to die to that 'I' and its continuation of the past.
The phrase "This one's on me" means that you agree to make the payment for the unwanted experience of conflict in the moment; it means that you are not going to shift responsibility onto the other person.
Behind the resistance to any moment is the idea that you know how to change it, that you know how the moment ought to be.
Has blame ever changed you or the other person involved in a conflict? Or does blame perpetuate the conflict?
The Three Living Prayers: Let me be present to the pain of my own nature before I subject "you" to it. Let me suffer myself long enough to see what I would never be able to see otherwise. Let me bear myself in silence so that I'm the only one who knows I'm suffering.
The dead keeps the dead "alive" by convincing human beings of the necessity of doing it. The dead keeps itself "alive" by finding ways to make sure that you don't disturb it. Regrets are the dead being brought back to life.
Stop trying to be seen by other human beings in the futile attempt to confirm yourself. "When you pray, pray in the closet."
All we presently pray for are things for ourselves. A true living prayer is to connect to the Will that reveals you to yourself.
Key Lesson 
