Talk Takeaways

Useless struggle is the effort to maintain the self that believes outside conditions to be the cause of its experience.

The mind that cannot see itself is forever set against itself.

The sole/soul purpose of all true teachings is to get an individual to see that nothing is missing.

Our present level of consciousness sees transformation as a process of becoming, through the acquisition -- in a time to come -- of something that is missing outside of itself.

The ideas of time and distance are required in order to acquire anything that seems to be missing from your life. It is an illusion of a distance that needs to be travelled.

Is there a distance to travel to go within? "The Kingdom of Heaven is within." New Testament -- "Split a piece of wood, and I am there. Lift up the stone, and you will find me." Gospel of Thomas -- "O scion of Bharat, I am also the knower of all the individual fields of activity. The understanding of the body as the field of activities, and the soul and God as the knowers of the field, this I hold to be true knowledge." Bhagavad-Gita

One indicator of a false teaching is that it promises the end of your pain in a time to come... if you give the teacher enough money.

We don't want to depart from anything or from anywhere, even from a painful experience, unless we know beforehand where we will end up.

A world without conflict is a world without you trying to figure what you have to do in order to change yourself. You don't have to be in conflict with the world because the world cannot give you what you really need.

Conflict comes out of the attempt to reconcile what is seen as an opposing force, and the struggle is always outwardly directed towards the usual suspects that are blamed for the pain.

You cannot experience anything that is not already a part of your consciousness.

What if you were capable of being a witness to the moment of resistance? In the field, present to what is taking place, instead of outside of the field, again trying to change what is happening?

A mirror contains an infinite capacity to reflect what appears before it, and it does not resist whatever appears. What about the mirror of consciousness?

When the observer is seen as not being separate from the observed, there is a Witness present there that is greater than the sum of all the parts. Then there is no struggle because there is nothing that is in opposition to that higher nature.

The only way to be in conflict with any given moment is when the moment is perceived by the observer to be separate from itself.

Do not try to succeed with any spiritual exercise. Use the exercises to see.