Worry and uncertainty cannot be solved by the mind that creates these self-wrecking states. Only by allowing such fears to run their full course through the mind that has made them can that same mind come to see how it makes its own misery. Then fears are not resolved, they are dissolved.
All unhappy thoughts are creations of a mind that visits what it does for the sole purpose of stirring up something with which to stimulate itself. To see this truth is to see that you are not this mind, nor its misery -- which further means you need never again consent to the captivity inherent in trying to sort out its sufferings.
The initial stages in the work of giving up your suffering lead you through a new kind of suffering that begins with struggling to give yourself up, and ends with the glad discovery there was never any such sad self to surrender.
How many of you are short fused? We'll say it in other words. How many of you have virtually no tolerance for anything outside of what you want? On a scale of 1 to 100 degrees, what is your acceptable range relative to meeting moments? Is it something like 2 to 98? Or is more like 78 to 79? That's about it, isn't it? This tiny little bandwidth, and if anything even threatens to...
Topics covered: Each negative state that we currently act from comes with an incredibly strong sense of self whenever that weakness appears. The real root of the weakness is the identification with the state; We draw a strong sense of self from the very weakness that we say we wish to be from from. There is an addiction to resisting the weakness; There is nothing real that happens when we revisit the past...
Truth wants you to know that it is never in your best interest to unconsciously suffer, no matter how inwardly convincing it may feel to you that you will be betraying yourself or someone else if you don't. The only way that any suffering feeling can prove to you that you need it is to hypnotize you with a flood of itself. Step back from yourself. Learn instead to listen to the quiet stream of...
In the end, and to the point of this work we do, the journey is from outward to inward. The journey takes a person from "out there" (powers and possessions, travel, drugs, new hobbies, friends, relatives, approval, etc.) to an understanding that as long as they look to anything or anyone outside of themselves, it is never going to reconcile or bring an end to the overwhelming negative states such as fear that are wrecking their life.
The reason why discouraging states hold us captive as they do is that they convince us that the limited darkness of their reality is all there is for us to live within! But such small states only have this last word about the world we live in as long as we agree with what they tell us is true about our possibilities. We can do better than consent to live like this, and here are the steps that...
It seems that nothing in my life has turned out the way I have prayed that it would. The sadness over my situation is overwhelming, even though I have tried my best to give all my failures over to God. Where do I go from here?...
Classroom Talk: 5/30/2003 - There are times when the greatest act of kindness we can express towards another human being is to swallow our own sadness, or to refuse to make that sarcastic or impatient remark. Acts of kindness such as these cost us ourselves, and when we agree to pay this price it is a better, brighter world that we buy back.