Talk Takeaways

Our struggles to find freedom have not done anything other than set up the next series of conditions that we will find ourselves struggling against.

Freedom has nothing to do with overcoming the conditions that we blame our pain on. What we must overcome is the level of consciousness that feels itself to be apart from the conditions that it perceives to be outside of itself.

Useless struggle is battling with conditions that seem contrary to what you want in order to validate the self you think you need to be.

The proper struggle is to be awake enough to see the level of consciousness that struggles uselessly to change conditions.

"And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin." -- New Testament

It is within the conscious meeting of active and passive forces, the meeting of yes and no, that transformation (rebirth, change) takes place.

No choice made in the attempt to avoid the proper struggle of being aware of yourself leads to a change in the consciousness that uselessly struggles against conditions.

"If I'm not for myself, who will be. If I'm only for myself, what am I. If not now, when." -- Hillel the Elder

The opposing forces of want and not-want require that the third-party of awareness be present in order to reconcile the struggle that takes place in the absence of that awareness.

This third-party of awareness, that sees the opposites at once, is the "Good wolf" that must be fed (from the well-known Native American story mentioned in this talk).

The present moment is the awareness of the opposing forces that are always stirring in the heart and mind.

The nature that wants what it wants does NOT want to go through anything that upsets its familiar sense of self. Therefore disturbances are shunned and avoided.

Don't struggle to not be negative. The proper struggle is to watch negativity snarl when it appears, leading to more understanding of the nature of the negativity. Then, within that understanding is contained the right action or non-action.

The new struggle is to die to what you imagine you have to be, instead of struggling with events in order to add to something to yourself.

Fight to stay in the Light, and then the Light does the rest. Ask to see, and then have the courage to stay there.

Freedom is not a time to come and it has no cause. So any search for freedom, based on what you want to find, is the very captivity that you are seeking to find freedom from.

You cannot feed something, like the sudden appearance of thoughts about your past, without expecting that it will want to be fed again and again.

The way out is through... through is in... in is clarity... clarity is sanity... sanity is freedom.