Everything You Need to Know to Put Your Life in Perfect Order

Talk Takeaways

If we all wore t-shirts that described our inner lives, they would say "Out of Order: Proceed with Caution."

The great unspoken assumption behind all of our unrest is the certainty that what is happening should not be happening.

Everyone and everything challenges the order that we have established. And anything or anyone that is out of order must be put back into order so that all will be well again, in a time to come.

Every last person on Earth is the king or queen of order, which is why there is unending conflict.

Negative reactions -- anger, resentment, fear, hatred -- seem to prove that the other person or the event is out of order. Pain seems to prove that only 'I' am in order.

What is active touches what is passive, and a reconciling force -- in bringing the active and the passive together -- gives birth to something new. This act of creation happens naturally in nature. What happened to human beings that keeps them from realizing that -- like all of nature -- they are living, dying and being reborn every moment?

The right order is "Not my will, but Thy Will." If I fight with that natural order, it is because I know how life is supposed to be.

Resistance is identification. We usually think that resistance separates us from what is being resisted, but resistance binds us to -- and is identification with -- what is being resisted.

It is a false light that guides us in trying to put the moment back into order. It is a lower nature that believes its own conclusions are true, and then defends those conclusions against anything that challenges them.

The punchline of the story of the knight who saves the princess from the dragon is: Move toward the light that exposes the darkness, instead of identifying with the reaction to the darkness. As you move towards the light, the light moves towards you.

In the midst of despair or any other kind of negative state, the light is not gone, but the darkness is calling itself the light.

Right effort begins with remembering the light that is already in order, and that the light reveals what is out of order. The light waits for you to remember it.

Anything that is talking to you about why you are feeling the way you do -- and what you need to do about it -- is the darkness calling itself the light.