Our fears and worries, our ambitions make something of us, don't they? The fact is, everything makes something of us because there's something in us that makes of it what is does, which is the real meaning of the old expression: a tempest in a teapot.
We meet moments that challenge us essentially with the idea of "I have to have more money, more approval, more knowledge." Translation: "What do I have to add to myself to give me something that will allow me to meet this moment?" And so, taking thought, we think we have to add to ourselves money, possessions, power, authority. We think it's adding something to ourselves. But we don't add anything to ourselves except for what thought imagines, which is why -- once we've added that quality -- it proves to be nothing at all in the moment something comes along and once again challenges the assumption that we have something of our own.
This level of consciousness with which the world microcosmically and macrocosmically -- individually and nationwide -- meets every unwanted challenging moment with the idea of this is what I have to do; this is what I have to have; this is what I need to get; this is what I need to protect... ignores the fact that it isn't what I have to have that's going to make a change, and it never has.
Change in the moment is born not out of what I have to have, but out of understanding what I am -- not out of what I have to give myself, but what I have been given at the outset. How are we to understand something like that when every first reaction we have is always the presumption that there is something to be resisted? And if it's to be resisted, there must be something fearful in it. And if there is something fearful in it, it means that I've already been brought into a world where the assumption is that the condition is greater than I am.
There is nothing greater than who and what you have been given at birth: who you are, your true nature. And until you understand how to meet the moment from what you are as opposed to what you don't want or hope to get, you will forever be caught in a struggle, a conflict born out of something in you that gives the meaning to the condition that you want to overcome.
When you look at a moment and you feel like you can't get through it, what are you looking at? You're not looking at the condition. You're literally looking at a thought of your own telling you that what you are looking at is the thing. It's not the thing. It's a thought. It's what's been imagined in that moment so that that self can have a tempest in a teapot.
And is the reaction to a moment I don't want outside of me? Where's the reaction? Where are all the choices made based on that reaction? Out there? Or does it take place in me? What's the nature of the reaction to the moment? Is it because the moment came dressed in a monster costume that assumed a face? Or is it because the reaction itself, which is in me, gave some rules and regulations to a condition that's passing, so that it can sit there and make a tempest out of a teapot, and I can be the master brewer?
What do you think happens on the day you discover that every fear you have over someone or something is there because there is a part of you that first imagines what that moment might mean, and what it might take from you? Then you realize, how can it take from me what is real? I was given the whole kingdom, and everything that comes out of that kingdom I was given at birth. And that's my authority.
When you know that everything you see and experience -- meaning everything that gives your life the meaning it does -- and the experience that's subsequent to that meaning, is all taking place in you, then there's no more condition you don't want. Because every condition proves to you what it is you were put on this planet to discover, which is before this world you were, and after this world you will be. What can frighten that? That's your job to find out.