Enemies

When this sensory mind of ours perceives life, it mistakenly sees things as happening to it from the outside in. How does this error in perception affect us? It means that we perceive life as a series of things coming at us. Everything about us is oriented outwardly, and it appears to us that our lives are being determined from the outside in.

We each have ideas about who we are, how the events in our lives should go, and how other people should treat us. We believe that if everything goes according to our plan, we will be safe. By the same token, anything that threatens the fulfillment of the plan is seen as an enemy. What might some of these enemies be? Other people who don't give us the respect we deserve.

The real adversary in our lives, that proverbial thorn in our side that leaves us aching and angry, and then sends us looking for someone to blame, is not what we have always believed. It is not something "out there." It's something "in here": an intimate enemy.

Topics covered:  "You do not see at all, but you think you see. You are identified with every thought that passes by, and the sense of self that comes with it;  Anything that you imagine, and then identify with, has no life in it at all; It is impossible to have a lingering negative reaction unless, in the moment of the reaction, you have met a moment like that before."

Topics covered: When does the world change? When you change the way you see the world; The blessed ones through the ages have tried to convey the idea that you need new eyes to see what is in front of you all the time but that you don’t currently see. And the reason you don’t see is because the impressions that are intended to produce a real change are deflected by all kinds of buffers — beliefs, conditions, longings.

Topics covered: Do you know a "friend" who is always promising some order of freedom, but who is never able to deliver on the promise? You would drop that friend immediately, wouldn't you? So why won't you drop the interior "friend" that is always whispering promises in your ear?; Anything that you see in nature is not separate from the nature that created it. Anything that is created is...

Topics Covered: It is not our responsibility to balance our own consciousness; That which can see what is out of balance is balance; Awareness is that which makes the sun shine on good and evil alike; Unpractical thought is the never-ending futile attempt to balance a reaction; The world that is raging is the rage I see in me; To try to not have an identity is an identity...