Talk Takeaways

As long as you are afraid of life, you have not accomplished anything, despite how much you believe you have accomplished.

It is a nightmare to believe that you have to endlessly prove yourself, over and over again.

There is an immense difference between trying to prove yourself, and trying to be yourself. We have mistaken "proving yourself" for "being yourself." The world does not know anything about what it means to "be yourself."

Honesty is the single greatest requirement for anyone who genuinely wishes to walk the inner path.

If you really knew what freedom was, you would never fear losing it.

The struggle is never with the moment itself. Rather, the struggle is within the consciousness that is struggling with the moment.

The struggle to acquire and protect what you imagine you must have in order to be free is captivity.

We get anxious and worry about our relationships with others because we depend upon them for our sense of self to stay in place.

The struggle to protect yourself from fear is itself the action of the fear that you struggle against.

There is a difference between "useful struggle" and "useless struggle." Useless struggle is tied to maintaining/protecting an image of ourselves. Useful struggle is the discovery and the revelation of the parts of ourselves that engage in any useless struggle. Strive to discover rather than to prove.

The divided consciousness that is unaware of itself believes that more struggle will eventually lead to the end of struggle.

Judgment of yourself is not proof that you are different from what is being judged. It does prove that you do not yet see the divided level of consciousness that struggles to prove itself.

The 'I' that is struggling with the moment IS the moment that it is struggle with.

It is a useful form of struggle to see that you cannot stop struggling to save yourself.

Catch yourself struggling to pull a rabbit out of your hat, i.e.: save yourself again. For example: anxiously trying to figure out what to say or do during an uncomfortable silence.

Struggling to bring an end to conflict is itself a form of conflict.