Insight Timer Talks

By and large, most of us hold an unseen, but utterly false belief: the more we feel the need to talk to ourselves about something, the more important it is we do so. But what are we so busy talking to ourselves about in these moments of stress... if not what we must do in order to escape the painful experience of our own stressful reaction?  

Just as we can only move freely in a darkened room when there is light to reveal what surrounds us, so it is with the unseen dimensions within us: in any given moment, we live in a world no larger than the measure of our understanding.

Negative states are never positive; they seem to empower us in times of trial, but in truth they blind us, isolate us, and steal from us our right to see that we are never more powerless than when identified with any form of anxiety, anger, or fear.

It is a celestial Law: whatever we resist, we cannot overcome. But there is a still greater Divine Law that the Light that creates shadows is empowered -- before their time began -- to transform and dispel them.

Part 1: In any peace we name -- imagine, pursue and then struggle to protect -- lurks a fear that stalks those who dream they can possess what is beyond imagination. Part 2: Before we can hope to enter into the Peace of the Divine Life that dwells within us, we must learn how to search for it in the Light Place.

When we know we can't put out a fire by feeding it more wood, then why don't we see the futility of trying to calm a mind enflamed by its own thinking... by adding more thoughts?

Nothing we blame for the pain of our anger, anxiety, or fear can ever change their real cause. The true source of our suffering -- individually and collectively -- is an unconscious nature that invents its own enemies, and then suffers in the futile attempt to conquer them... something it can never do, just as it's impossible for a shadow to overcome sunlight.

Sensation is but an echo -- a shadow cast by the Real. It belongs to life, yet it is not Life itself. Mistaking sensation for Life... is like mistaking a shadow for the sun whose light lends it form, and from which it has been cast.

Doing the right thing, in the right way, begins with seeing the right order of things. All of life's lessons point us toward this simple, celestial truth. Through the pain of missteps and mistakes, we are gradually awakened to discover what has always been right before our eyes: whenever things are out of order within us, our choices and actions must follow -- and sorrow is the inevitable result.

Calling on anxious thoughts to check the rising tide of some fearful feeling is like trying to stop a landslide by throwing rocks at it!

Self-realization is the same as the conscious negation of any form of identification; (it is) inseparable from a higher awareness that reveals what no so-called "spiritual thinking" can see, let alone understand as true: no matter how pleasurable or painful, elevated or excruciating may be any conditional, temporary  sense of self... it is not who you are.

We can either spend our lives shaking in fear each time an unwanted moment arrives -- trying to protect ourselves from it -- or we can use that same situation to see through the false self that believes being fearful can lead to the end of being afraid.