Enter the Broader World of New Understanding

Can you think of a way in which you regularly sabotage yourself? You sabotage yourself when "something" in you acts against yourself.

Now, for most of us, we have a passing understanding of an idea like that because we recognize that we don't want to hurt ourselves. We don't want to hurt others. We don't want to be a burden to this planet. We don't want to do a lot of the things we do. But we still do them. "Something" in me acts against me.

How can a human being have something inside of him or her that acts against them? It's evidence of a rudimentary conflict that exists inside of the human being. And the absence of the knowledge, and agreement with the fact of it, sits at the root of why the world is in ruins. Because nobody will admit to themselves that there's a certain part of them that, under the right circumstances, it talks, it walks, it speaks, it pushes, it eats, and it does things against themselves and others.

Who is this me that recognizes that I wish I wasn't doing something at the time, but still can't stop myself from doing it? Or that I just did what I wish I wouldn't have done and now I need to make reparations and make a new start? Who is the me that wants to make a new start? The answer is, that me is for all intents and purposes the best understanding I have of what is good.

The part of me that wants a new start can't be in that moment the part of me that agrees with what is cruel, with what undermines, with what tears down. Something in me recognizes that I need to make a new start because it sees that something in me is sabotaging my relationships with myself and others. So what is this me that recognizes that things are ruining its life? And the answer is, that me is the best understanding I have of how I ought not to be sabotaging myself.

This part of me that knows that it ought not do what it finds itself being taken through represents a world. It represents the world of its understanding. Can anybody do any better than they understand? In fact, most of us can't even do the good that we do understand, can we? Because there's something that seems to be stronger than our best understanding in the moments where -- if we had our best understanding -- we wouldn't be betraying ourselves or others as we are.

So this best understanding I have, the me that it represents, is a world. And how do we know it's a world? Because all of us know, to one degree or another, that it's possible to live in a world of broader understanding. It's possible to live from a part of myself that doesn't sabotage itself the way it used to under certain circumstances. And all of us have been through that to some degree. People who get captured in the world by this, that, or the other one day absolutely can't take part in what used to harm them. And they enter into a world that is not only broader than the understanding of the sabotaging self, but because the understanding is superior to the self that sabotaged them, they enter into a new world of themselves; one that will not allow - and that brings an end to - the world that formerly dominated them.

Each brighter, broader world is represented by a new understanding of ourselves. That understanding, that wisdom, belongs to God, belongs to a living light, a divine order whose essence is uncompromised, incorruptible, intelligent. You start to live from a broader world, and you don't do the things you used to do. Why? Because thought is not there prompting you to do it. And in scale, you begin to recognize that the things I'm about to do are not right for me or for you.