Talk Takeaways
We say we want to be free of our suffering, but the life we currently live ensures the suffering will continue.
Attention is connection, so that you are always connected to what you are attending to. Connection is relationship, which is a form of union between the observer and the observed.
Perfect self-command would mean that you could not be overcome by any negative state that comes along to command you.
There is a huge difference between conscious attention and unconscious desire that attends to what it wants.
Regrets over your past are a form of useless suffering.
When you are thinking about what you don't want, you connect yourself through attention to the very thing you resist.
We do not have authority over WHAT we experience. The authority we have is over WHO is having the experience.
We are created to realize ourselves as one with whatever we behold in our mind's eye.
The root of your problem is not what you see outside of yourself. The root of the problem is that you are blind to yourself. Every painful problem we will ever face begins with misplaced attention.
Whatever is in our mind's eye is the same as our prevailing identity in that moment. Your attention and your identity in any given moment are inseparable.
The mind must know the reason for every disturbing sensation, and so it attempts to describe and manipulate what it has determined to be the cause of the disturbance.
We can't know what it means to wake up until we understand thoroughly what it means to be asleep.
An unattended mind is the breeding ground of self-defeat and pain, because it attends to what will support the continuity of its sense of self.
The real source of conflict is in a consciousness that is set against itself.
When you feel a regret, worry, fear, or any kind of negative state, connect what you are experiencing with what you are attending to in that moment. You are the experience that you are having.
Every moment that we use to reclaim our attention are the most profitable moments possibile.
The thought that looks out at what torments you IS what is tormenting you.