Find the Strength You Seek Within the Weakness You Fear

Talk Takeaways

There are parts of us that do not want anything to do with the truth of things.

Why is it that human beings have not known what to do with their suffering for all this time? Human beings are the captive of a suffering that they do not understand.

Regardless of how conditions have changed as a result of our ability to change them with technology, etc., we are all still absolute captives of the suffering we don't understand. 

You cannot separate the skirmishes you have within your own family from the larger battles humanity has over the belief that if we can control others we will stop suffering. 

No creature in nature invents its own purpose for being. Creatures in nature do not design their own purposes. They are here to fulfill a purpose that serves that which created them. 

Resistance of an unconscious nature is suffering.

My individual story, which includes what I want, is in conflict with the broader story, which includes what Life wants.

If you want to understand something, you have to go into it. If you want to understand resistance and its attendant suffering, then you have to go into it deliberately.

Thinking about what you have done after the fact is not the same as having been aware of what you were doing.

"Weakness is very painful, but also very useful. While any self-love remains, you are afraid that it will be discovered. As long as the least bit of self-love remains in the secret parts of your heart, God will hunt it down, and, by some infinitely merciful blow, force your selfishness and jealousy out of hiding. The poison then becomes the cure. Self-love, exposed to the light, sees itself in horror. The flattering lifelong illusions you have held of your self are forced to die. God lets you see who you really worship: yourself." -- Francois Fenelon (1651 – 1715, France)

Much of our lives are spent trying to reconcile the disparity beween what we want and what we don't want.

We cannot separate any state of want/not-want from the unseen resistance and suffering that comes with it.

The illusion that we understand suffering is the real cause of its continuation.

Stop relying on weakness to tell you where strength is found. Strength is within the revelation of the weakness. To find it you are going to have to go into it.

Instead of avoiding weakness/suffering, the right attitude towards it is, "Show me your true nature." Do not run from it anymore.

Complaining is the avoidance of the suffering that you yourself are responsible for.

The only thing that troubles you about other people is what you want from them. There is nothing that any other person can give you that will make you a free human being.