This session represents one of Bartholomew's most direct and practical teachings on the fundamental misconception that blocks spiritual awakening. Opening with the statement that there is "tremendous confusion in most people's minds between awakening and the cessation of pain," Bartholomew systematically dismantled the belief that one must eliminate difficulties from life before experiencing God-realization. Using Christ as the primary exemplar of a fully awakened being who experienced intense suffering, the teaching demonstrated that awakening is a state of understanding that transcends conditions rather than eliminating them.

The session explored the metaphysical framework underlying this teaching: consciousness itself creates life circumstances with perfect compassion to drive seekers within, while the body-mind mechanism is always "the last to know" what consciousness is orchestrating. Bartholomew explained that every difficulty contains "the way to the truth and the light of your being in the midst of it without you trying to solve it." This challenges students to stop "scurrying around for something to make your life happy" and instead recognize that "in the midst of the most intense pain, there is the light."

A central theme was the immediacy of spiritual availability - the repeated emphasis that "it's now" rather than a future achievement. Bartholomew used the ocean metaphor to illustrate how the "tremendous, powerful, impacted, silent darkness" at the depths exists simultaneously with surface activity, all within one ocean requiring no journey to access. Similarly, awareness was presented as the unchanging screen upon which all experiences are projected, always present regardless of content.

The teaching addressed practical obstacles, including the belief in time-space as spiritual reality, the trap of seeking external solutions, and particularly the way desire for spiritual teaching can itself become an obstacle to awakening. Through student interactions, Bartholomew demonstrated how self-pity, feeling unloved by God, and other painful states can become the very fuel for breakthrough when approached with courage to "find out" rather than conceptual solutions.

The session culminated in the revolutionary understanding that "yearning and getting there are the same thing" - that the very act of seeking indicates arrival at what is sought. Students are guided to recognize they are "always aware of something," and this awareness itself is what they seek. The teaching emphasized that God consciousness is "so ever-present, so obvious, so continuously present that you overlook it," requiring only the willingness to stop thinking long enough to recognize what is already intimately familiar.