Talk Takeaways

The last thing we want is to be in the lowest place, even though every true teaching talks about one's salvation being found not in pride nor in any of the possessions we have acquired.

Your life has its own teachings. You alone can receive what you have been given to receive. Life is not a race to win, but a school for your higher education.

Arrogance is the act of pushing everything away that does not correspond with the image we hold onto of ourselves.

To "re-member" yourself, to gather yourself, is to not identify with the reactions that scatter our attention outwardly, trying acquire what the reaction says we need to be free.

Thought rushes in to describe impressions so that there can be a thinker who believes that it knows. Who we think we are, and our familiar explanations, are one thing.

We spend our lives trying to acquire what then needs to be protected, which leads to fear and a strong sense of self.

"One went to the door of the Beloved and knocked. A voice asked: 'Who is there?' He answered: 'It is I.' The voice said: 'There is no room here for me and thee.' The door was shut. After a year of solitude and deprivation this man returned to the door of the Beloved. He knocked. A voice from within asked: 'Who is there?' The man said: 'It is Thou.' The door was opened for him." -- Jalal al-Din Rumi

Fear, anger, worry, and anxiety are scattering states that look only outside at the world that is judged as being responsible for the painful feeling. Every negative reaction that we identify with is a scattering force.

Self-knowledge is not intellectual knowledge. Self-knowledge is a living seeing that reveals the limits of mere intellectual knowledge.

We can't re-member ourselves by identifying with any one of the moving parts of ourselves, ie: reactions, sensations, thoughts, feelings, etc. No moving part can be instrumental in remembering ourselves.

To immediately start describing something you have seen about yourself is to scatter what has been gathered by the very light that reveals what it did.

"He that is not with me is against me; and he that gathereth not with me scattereth abroad." -- New Testament. What does it mean "to scatter": He that does not take himself in hand and lead himself as he would an animal. The person who does not gather (their attention) will be scattered.

In the pure awareness of yourself you don't have to talk to yourself about what you see. In that awareness there is no distance nor time between the observer and the observed.

Exercise: Gather yourself, collect yourself within to see that everything you need to see is already there within awareness. Be vigilant, take responsibility of your attention. See that talking to yourself is scattering. You do not need anything outside of yourself in order to gather yourself.

Identification is scattering, and the more one scatters, the more rejection there is of the conditions that are blamed for your perceived lack of freedom. Don't try to free yourself, see yourself.

When you stop scattering, that is when gathering takes place, then you will have to suffer the scatterer.