Talk Takeaways
Being present is the same as the capacity to do the right thing at the right time, without needing thought.
"The truth about the action must be known and the truth of inaction also must be known; even so the truth about prohibited action must be known. For mysterious are the ways of action. He who sees inaction in action and action in inaction, is wise among men." -- Bhagavad Gita
Neither action nor inaction that is the product of desire has ever freed a human being.
In order to receive something truly new, you first are going to have to want something truly new. What you value is your life.
It is the gradual negation of what, up until now, you have called your life that leads to the new life you really want.
When desire does not deliver what it promised, desire simply imagines a new plan and a new promise. This is the ferris wheel of misfortune.
Our will, the lower will of desire, believes that it cannot be content unless it gets everything that it wants.
In order to feel better physically, you have to do what a part of you doesn't want to do, which for instance may be cutting out junk foods and/or exercising. The same applies internally.
In order to do the good we are going to have to suffer the part of ourselves that doesn't want anything to do with the good.
To have a new first in your life includes having an awareness of the greater good, as well as an awareness of the unwilling self.
You do not have to be anything -- a Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim, nor anything at all -- to know that it is not good to hurt another person.
Presently for us the wrong will (the will of desire) is first, and the Will of what is Good is in second place at best.
Making an "effort without desire" includes seeing the pain and futility of the effort in pursuing what desire promises. It is also the grace of the awareness of another order of Being.
The Greater Good is sacrificing the desire of what was... in favor of the Will of what is.
Find places in your life where the action you have always taken cannot be the action you take now, because you see how you become the instrument of a painful desire.
Do what you don't want to do when you don't want to do it. Then you will see the part of you that doesn't want to make right effort.