Talk Takeaways
We are always trying to recapture a peace that we think we have lost. But the whole idea of restoring a peace that you have lost is an illusion.
The mind that believes it has lost its peace imagines a peaceful time to come, which it never reaches.
The negative reaction that other people bring up in you is YOUR limitation, not the limitation of the other person.
The nature that blames everything outside of itself as the source of suffering IS the source of suffering.
"God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference." -- Serenity prayer
We are not at peace because of a nature within us that will not see and accept the fact that it cannot control everything that disturbs it.
One of the great problems with struggling to change whatever disturbs us, is that we cannot see that we cannot drop the struggle.
We are terrified of suddenly finding ourselves powerless because we have imagined what power is.
We look to fear as a guide because it promises to give us power over what it is afraid of.
To see the real cause of our suffering is the only real resolution to that suffering. To blame something else as the cause -- by a part of us that owns and misdirects our attention -- is the reason the suffering goes on unreconciled.
The unconscious nature, that cannot see itself, is what creates the unwanted experience that it then struggles to resolve.
We see life through the eyes of an unconscious nature that does not want to see that it is the source of unconscious psychological suffering. Seeing that is the beginning of the end of its authority.
The antidote is in the venom of the disturbing moment that arises that something in you wants to reject.
The real surrender of yourself is not for the purpose of getting something better in return. That is saving oneself, not real surrender.
Seeing is not the addition of anything. It is the removal of an illusion.
When we actually see the poverty of this unconscious nature, we will stop banking on it.