The biggest problem facing us as individuals is that we have all been caught up in the race of looking for relief. Our time would be spent far more profitably looking for strength. When caught in a fierce storm, why scramble to find a cave at the foot of the mountain when the same energy can be used to climb? There is a choice. You can tremble within the cave, or live above the tempests that lash the valley below. Our mistake is that we are trying to figure out how to cope with suffering - make the best of it - instead of learning how to terminate it. We would never tolerate a dictatorial government, so why do we put up with all of the inner-tyrants, including their leader, the chief dictator, better known as the false self? We need not. A revolt is necessary, and I can promise you that victory is assured. However, you must revolt intelligently. Don't waste your time planning a coup in the workplace or at home. Leave your relationships alone. They are not the problem. If you want to live the ever-pleasant, ever-present life, the only regime you must overthrow is your present way of thinking. As you will soon see, this is not nearly as difficult as it may sound.
The first step in this right rebellion to reclaim your own life is to learn what it means to think about yourself instead of from yourself. The difference being that when you learn to think about your thinking, this special kind of self-separation allows you to question its intelligence. This is a highly intelligent act because thinking from yourself lets unexamined thoughts race by and into action. For instance, saying yes when you mean to say no, or vice versa, is a small but painful illustration of what happens to us when we don't examine our thoughts and feelings before speaking. Resentment almost always follows. And, as we are learning, one of the chief tricks of the false self is to make you think that what it wants is what you want.
In this case, the false self loves to feel resentful. Resenting someone is like a pleasure cruise on a luxury liner for this shallow nature, because it can crash and sink itself again and again over the situation. A situation, incidentally, it caused itself but whose wreckage you are left to clean up. So you see it can be highly profitable to challenge your own thinking. Just as you would never buy a sack of diamonds without first confirming the seller's professional standing and the stones' actual value, you should never buy any of your own thoughts or feelings until you are certain of their source and that they are indeed yours! Don't be surprised by this idea. I'll show you one example of how we think we are thinking while actually the thinking we are calling ours can be proven counterfeit and worse than valueless.
Snap Yourself Out of Psychic Slumber
I'm sure that we can all agree that no intelligent, conscious man or woman would ever intentionally hurt him or herself. It is important that we are in agreement about this precept. No one would choose to ache. Yet the fact remains that all of us do hurt ourselves every day with bursts of anger or fits of depression or anxiety. There can be no doubt, beginning with the physical level and on up, that fear and worry exact a definite toll on all levels of our health and well-being. Intelligent, conscious beings would never intentionally hurt themselves, but we somehow manage to do just that in one way or another almost every day. So how do we reconcile this contradiction? There is only one possible conclusion that we can draw from these facts, and it is imperative that we paint this picture clearly to ourselves.
We must be unconscious while thinking that we are awake! In other words, during those times of self-betrayal when we are hurting ourselves or others with negative inner states, even though our eyes are open and all kinds of sensations are coursing through us, we must be asleep to what we are doing to ourselves or we wouldn't be doing it. Somehow, and we will discover just exactly how, we have become separated from the real Intelligence within us that knows better than to punish itself. There is never, I repeat, never any intelligent reason to feel bad. If you will only let these truthful ideas prove this astonishing fact to you, one day this new understanding will go before you and defeat all that has been defeating you.
Now comes an important moment in our self-questioning. This is what we have been working towards. We are about to win the prize that always follows when we persist with our inner lessons. If real Intelligence is incapable of hurting itself, then how can we call any thinking that leads to a stressful state intelligent? Obviously we can no longer continue to call such thinking intelligent unless we want to go on sinking from this present level of thinking.
Let's review briefly. Intelligence does not cause itself to suffer. Yet, as proven, we suffer. This can only mean that a counterfeit intelligence has been passed off on us and its thinking accepted as our very own. There is only one way that such a sinister switch could take place within us and go undetected. During those all-too-familiar worry-packed moments, we are asleep to ourselves. In this strange psychic slumber we only dream we are awake, so can you see the solution to this sorry state? Since unawareness of ourselves is the only problem, then awareness is the only answer. A sting operation can only work as long as the victim believes that one of the players who is secretly in on the sting is trying to help him. Let's say all of this in another way.
You may not be able to think your way out, but you can see your way clear. This special kind of inner seeing is safety. Waking up to yourself is the same as letting go of all those self-defeating thoughts and feelings that have been telling you how to win.