Talk Takeaways

What usually follows a moment of regret is not a change of consciousness, but instead a new set of justifications to explain why we did what we did.

We are easily "triggered" because we are loaded with pain, the weight of the past, and we don't know what do to with it.

It is impossible to let go with one hand, and hold on with the other. That is not real letting go.

How does an old pain or problem find its way back into my hand? Without knowing it, something in me picks it up again. The part of me that picks it up again does not want to let go of it because its life, its sense of self, depends upon it.

If you are suffering psychologically, something in you has gone into memory and has identified with something that it then says it does not want.

We would never think to ourselves that we prefer to suffer. That divided, unenlightened part of our consciousness does prefer to suffer, but we don't see it. Seeing that puts our feet firmly on the path up the  mountain.

"We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience." -- Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881 - 1955)

Has one good thing ever come out of complaining about our lives? And yet, it goes on and on. Isn't there something more valuable to do? If I identify with a complaint, it is the same as agreeing that the moment is not supposed to be happening as it is.

Where is my attention in a moment that I don't want? It is focused on the thing I don't want. But again, this happens without me really being aware that it is happening. Who owns my mind? Something owns it and it's not me, or I wouldn't keep punishing myself.

The moment that we don't want is never going to end as long as we don't want it. Resistance to the moment ensures that the familiar experience of that unwanted moment will continue.

Who you have been is not your present possibilities. "Let it be" means "let it end," which includes working to be aware of the sense of self that doesn't want to come to an end.

A new mind is a mind that turns around and sees itself.

There is nothing that you encounter, no person or event, that is not there to show you something new about yourself.

You cannot be kind to a person whose approval you want. You can't be genuine and have a motive at the same time.

You don't need power. That is the illusion of the this world. It is painful to believe that you possess any power at all, and because it is not real you have to keep proving that you have it.