Insight Timer Talks

There lives nothing real in our past -- regardless of how disappointing or painful it may have been -- that can grab us and make us its captive, any more than dark shadows have the power to keep us from walking into the sunlight.

Only as we run out of ways to explain our pain to ourselves do we come to realize the true source of that suffering; a revelation that includes the shocking fact that whatever keeps giving us the reasons for this pain... is inseparable from its unwanted, yet unabated continuation.

The purpose of a compass is not to tell you who or what you are; it's created to give you trusted guidance, so you don't lose your way. So it is with any revelation about yourself; its (Divine) light is to help you see all that you may yet be, and certainly not to judge you over what you are not.

Imagine trying to see the whole of an ocean through a ship's porthole, and we have a pretty good idea why (our) life can so often feel small and confined; as if we have no choice but to be swept out to sea on a single wave of some fearful thought or feeling.

Resisting the revelation of any existing limitation of ours... is like fearing the ocean because we never took the time to learn how to swim!

Part 1: If we mistakenly give any negative reaction its "life" -- then the opposite must hold true: we can consciously withdraw that same life any time we so choose! Part 2: Starve a cold, feed a fever. Starve a reaction, feed your freedom!

Real life never stops starting over; it is the eternal showcase of the Divine.

It's impossible to die to the pain of our past... as long as we remain identified with an unconscious nature that can't seem to go through a day without reliving some dark memory it then summarily resists.

No unwanted experience of life will ever be "over" for us until we're inwardly awake enough...to get over wishing that it was.

Here's why the negative sense of self is blind: it doesn't want to see the smallest thing that challenges whatever it's become identified with; and yet (it is) unable to look at anything else...Which means it is not just a prisoner of what it resists, but (is its) unconscious keeper, as well.

Hoping that a memory from "days gone-by" can show you the way out of any unwanted moment -- and into a safer time to come -- is like finding yourself lost in a dark canyon, and following the echo of your own plaintive voice -- mistaking it to belong to someone who's come to rescue you.

The mind asleep to itself doesn't realize it creates the stress and strain it can't stop trying to rescue itself from; and that the more it struggles to think of a way out of its self-induced conflict, the greater grows its struggle.