Talk Takeaways

To paraphrase the well-known koan: If a tree falls in the woods, and there's no one there wishing it didn't, does it create fear or suffering?

The very struggle to escape the captivity of the consciousness that you are born into is why you remain a captive of that consciousness.

The task is not to save yourself. The task is to realize a relationship with a part of you that does not need to be saved because it does not lock itself in prison.

The divided consciousness is always trying to escape psychological pain by pursuing a pleasure, trying to escape a negative state by seeking something that it perceives as positive.

The realm of the opposites of pain and pleasure is not intended to be avoided nor held onto. Rather, that realm of pain and pleasure is intended to be seen for what it is.

You have not been created to be a captive of a level of consciousness that painfully identifies with everything that passes through it.

The cost of freedom from captivity is giving up what for your entire life you have called "you."

Conflict is not the fault of something else. You are complicit in every moment of conflict in your life.

The level of consciousness that is a captive must forever search for a path that promises freedom. We serve that level of consciousness every time we listen to the tyrant that tells us what to do in order to be free.

There is scarcity because there is greed. There is greed because of imagined scarcity.

The moment can't bring something up inside of you that is/was not already there before the moment uncovered it.

We cannot let go of something we don't want through our own will. Awareness of the consciousness that is unaware of itself is the path to letting go of what we have been identified with.

As long as you are unaware of the divided consciousness, that consciousness is going to determine your experience of life. When you are unaware, you are passive to the activity of that mechanical nature.

Being passive to what is mechanically and unconsciously active in you guarantees that you will keep running through the same loop of feeling like a captive followed by a search for freedom.

Resistance to whatever pains us does not separate us, let alone liberate us from that pain; in truth, it binds us to the unconscious nature that creates it.

Become the witness of the consciousness instead of serving it painfully the way that you have been.

Who you really are cannot be defined. Thinking about yourself and being aware of yourself are two completely separate things. You learn something about yourself by watching thought, not by thinking about yourself.