Responsibility

If you haven't noticed this yet about yourself, it's easy to see in others: we each seem to carry the weight of the world on our shoulders. The nature of this burden may change with age. When young, we feel the weight of having to choose a direction in life. As adults, we feel encumbered by all the perceived requirements of an active life: trying to control events, win acceptance, maintain relationships, on and on, with each new self-shaped solution...

It is no stretch of the imagination to say that many days most people wrestle with some form of discontentment about their lot in life. Add to this an equal if not greater amount of time spent searching for the solution they think will "cure" this confliction, and it might surprise us how pervasive runs this human pastime of trying to dodge these feelings of being discontent...

There is an unseen source of daily suffering that is the constant companion of humanity. It is in one respect one of the great driving forces behind the darkness that encompasses this planet -- the unremitting wars, the violence, the greed, the fear, the desperation -- all the things we see in the world around us...

To believe that we’re only as worthwhile as others agree to see us burdens us with feeling that winning the good opinion of others is somehow our responsibility. Such a mistaken mindset leaves us the perennial victim of our relationships, and never the victor in them. The only way we can be released from any painful sense of false responsibility is to see that it is based in a false belief...

Either we live in the freedom that we know is real -- choosing to embody it in the moment, regardless of the cost -- or we wave a flag called "liberty tomorrow" and suffer the indignity of serving what has already betrayed us.

As we realize that there is no way that painful concern can positively affect any outcome, we drop that concern, and bit by bit, we begin to hear what real life has been trying to tell us all along.

One reason why negative states sneak in so easily to steal our peace is that we have been conditioned to believe in their right to punish us.

Without using interfering tactics, how can we help others to come awake to themselves? I know someone who drives me crazy, and I want to help him by sharing the truths I am learning. One of the most difficult aspects of our work is learning to bear the unpleasant manifestations of people around us. But this can also help us grow quickly. If by interfering tactics you mean, "make someone s...

Many times the very thing we want from others is the very thing that we ourselves either lack at the moment or otherwise somehow are withholding from them.

The true spiritual path begins and ends with what you already are. Use these 10 insights to tell the world you've lost interest in being you.

Remastered Classic Talk: 7/22/15 - To identify with even the brightest star is to lose sight of the boundless heavens within which it shines... without whose vast tracts of darkness would no celestial light be seen.

Remastered Classic Talk: 6/15/16 - It is possible to know so much about the nature of fear that, one day, it simply runs out of ways to make you believe in its shaking.