Discovering Freedom Through Challenge

the moment of stillness is always a good start to anything that you do any activity so it's important to become comfortable with stillness there are many humans in this world who are made extremely uncomfortable by stillness they can't stand it so we are here at a higher education establishment which means you've already been through lower education and have arrived at higher education and high education of course in most fields it requires you to sharpen and to constantly use the conceptual mind and that's fine because the conceptual mind is a wonderful to conceptual mind means the ability to think and to apply salt and so that's a wonderful thing it's been an incredible evolutionary development this the evolution of the ability to think but as in anything in this world there's always a downside and we can clearly see the downside of the conceptual mind because millions of humans are not just in the in higher education millions of humans are not so much using their mind as being at the mercy of their mind so humans say things like I think and that sounds reasonable they don't say things like I beat my heart because the heart the beating of the heart is something that happens to you you're not actually doing it but people think that when they think they do it but in most cases that's not true it happens the same way that your heart beats thought happens to you thought suddenly appears in your mind and there it is where did that come from and so the current state of human consciousness is one in which with the exception of dosti humans who are already going through a spiritual awakening and awakening of consciousness and I will come I will talk about what that actually means tonight in case you have some doubts is what what I'm talking about when I say awakening of consciousness with the exception of those humans who are already going through the process of a shift in consciousness the millions of others who are still totally identified with the conceptual mind totally identified with thought this continuous stream of thinking that incessantly arises and that they mistake for who they are and that's my people say I think of course especially with certain types of thought like the so-called War II you can see very clearly that it happens to you so you'd the mind goes and you cannot stop it you wake up at 3 in the morning and you start thinking fearful thoughts but possible bad outcomes and it goes on and on and you're trapped thought arises in you so the beginning of spiritual awakening is to see the thought the rise to see a thought and not be completely identified with it to recognize thought as thought the awakening of consciousness then when we talk about awakening people might say was I'm awake already we're using awakening in a different sense here as you probably know like when we talk about the Buddha the word Buddha was not not anybody's name it was a title later given to this person and the meaning of the root meaning of the word Buddha in Sanskrit is bored which means awake so the Buddha is somebody who is awake and in other many other spirits traditions the time of being awake is an important one and so what does that actually mean to be awake when we think we are awake we are are we not awake here now in ancient spiritual in Indian spirits or philosophy there's a term Sanskrit term called tu e tu are Y a Turia we're two by the way we had an institute of higher learning so I'm just mentioning some Sanskrit terms Turia means the force the force in they divided human consciousness into four stages one is dreamless sleep which of course you enter every night one is the dream state that's the second state of consciousness then there's a normal state of wakefulness that's the third state of consciousness and then there is the force Turia which is the state of this is this is a state that is beyond the conceptual mind it is a state of being dissident af-- ID from the stream of thinking and in modern terminology we may call this awareness or presence and this state is the rising already in many of you and that's why you are here so what you experienced here tonight may be perhaps the deepening of that state of awareness that's arising if you're not aware if you're not present in your daily life then you are identified completely with the conceptual mind and your entire sense of identity is a conceptual one in other words you derive your sense of who you are when this is very important your sense of who you are is very important because that determines how you relate to this world it determines how you react to things how you interact with people of your sense of identity is very important so in the absence of when or presence your sense of identity your sense of who you are is derived from the conceptual mind which means you inhabit a conceptual reality which basically is a narrative in your head that tells you who you are and it is derived from your past it's a way in which your mind has been conditioned by your past and these are stories that you tell yourself and basically what you when you think or talk about your life and you say my life that is the conceptual mind that is the narrative in your head that it is derived from the past and it has emotions that go with it and that's fine there's no doubt that there is a certain reality to that dimension in you in you you remember your past you remember things that have happened to you things your failures or such your successes the things that people did to you what you did to others you identify with things you incorporate things into that conceptual sense of self you incorporate possessions you incorporate what other people think of you you take that on board you incorporate those concepts into your sense of self this is in spirits of chance the egoic sense of selves or the ego spiritually speaking the ego is a sense of self that arises when there when the mind is completely unobserved the unobserved mind brings about the ego in fact the unobserved mind is the ego these are mental structures which are energy formations because every thought is an energy formation energy formations in your head that you that say that's me that me and my life and there certain characteristics to this egoic state one characteristic is that it exists in a state of frequent dissatisfaction discontent and there's an underlying an undercurrent of something vital is missing in my life I have not arrived yet there are some people on many people who feel they haven't started to live yet they're waiting for that moment when it's really going to take off when when sometimes they have certain expressions that say one day I'm going to make it we don't know what they're going to make but they're going to I'm going to get the big breakthrough or whatever it is and whatever that may be varies from person to person it could be to achieve financial success or recognition or better boast the two together Fame it could be meeting the ideal partner that is going to complete me and my story because right now it is not enough of me I need somebody to complete me and step there then you start looking for and sometimes you find with scenes that you found that person that the egoic sense of self was so longing for and now there he or she is and you ecstatically happened for a little while the ego feels ah I've arrived the same way that would happen if you if you offered a great job or you've just won the lottery or you get some kind of recognition in this world not there's anything wrong with recognition but it's a wonderful thing to achieve things is wonderful to endeavor to achieve things it's wonderful but you to look to these things and hope to find a more complete sense of self through a to have to hope to find that a complete sense of fulfillment and a lasting sense of fulfillment that doesn't seem to work because I haven't met anybody for whom that has worked except for brief periods that these periods are brief you may even though many of you are young you may already have experienced that the initial stage of meeting the ideal person does not last very long and at some point you realize that you met the wrong person and it was all a big mistake and at the latest when you start living with somebody you realize that the person that you first met and that you that that was so wonderful when you were having dinners together or going for a walk on the beach or wherever that person was looking at you like this and then you start living together and suddenly that person token no longer looks at you like this so there's something you the ego longs for something to add to the egos of always innocence of insufficiency that you're in remember the ego is a concept ultimately a narrative in your mind a conceptual reality that can never fulfill you no matter how much you add to it which does not mean you should not strive to do things in this world but do not expect this world to make you happy because happiness does not ultimately derive from this world this world is not designed to make you happy it is designed to challenge you and if you believe that this world is designed to make you happy then you're going to get very angry because as the years pass in your life you realize why isn't my life working why why is this reality seems to be always throwing obstacles in my path the moment I say oh this it's okay now this problem has been solved another one pops up from behind you you and so there you have these areas of your life the main areas being the physical physical health your financial situation your living situation your professional situation your relationship situation and one of these areas usually develops problems see you so much you solve a problem fell into me a financial area and then props up a relationship from you solve the relationship problems on the other health problem it's interesting that you're constantly being challenged and you might have noticed one of the greatest sources of challenges are human beings because humans are incredibly challenging and although humans look to other humans offer us some ultimate fulfillment through other humans more often what they find through other humans is that other humans don't turn out to be a source of suffering and that is because you're stuck in the egoic mind and you have the egoic mind to certain expectations of the world which includes whatever you experience in this world has certain expectations that the world cannot meet but if you believe that the world should then that is a delusional reality that you will be continuously unhappy the world continues to challenge you but you believe the world is here to make you happy that's a terrible dilemma so it means you're in your entire you want all your expectations aren't illusory but you don't know it and that creates an enormous amount of suffering because then every challenge that that you encounter in this world and they come one after another every challenge that you encounter in this world you then because of that underlying expectation that something is wrong when you're being challenged every challenge is then turned is turns into unhappiness there's a big difference between a challenge and unhappiness so when you have delusory expectations of the world then the world will make you unhappy and not happy but you continue to believe that something has gone fundamentally wrong in your life because life does not leave you alone I do you want some peace you want some ahh you want the sense of I've arrived this is it and occasionally it comes but it never lasts so very long so that's the dilemma there's the underlying state of ignorance not knowing that the function of this world is to challenge you because only by challenging you does it provide the necessary incentive to awaken you and it is that the you notice after a while that as you gradually begin to awaken out of the unconsciousness which is the complete identification with the conceptual egoic mind you begin to realize that oh a lot of the unhappiness that you experience and unhappiness is a generic term that could be many many things even a state of irritation is already unhappiness sadness is unhappiness anger son have any any state it doesn't feel good is unhappiness any any state unhappiness you begin to realize that the greater part of it is not arrived from the situations in your life and when you realize that that's the beginning of an awakening let's say 90% of the unhappiness that you encounter is actually produced by your mind and that's an amazing realization that remained at 10% unhappiness you might be very somebody a loved one dies close to you of course you experience you weep that is of course normal but if you observe the various forms of unhappiness in your life from from the very the mildest forms of unhappiness to the more extreme forms of her unhappiness let's say just two brief examples am i it's very very small a little bit of unhappiness arises many times when things happen in daily life and you can't immediately get what you want you're on the phone trying to get talk to your bank but of course there's no human being there and even that is a it's a minor form of unhappiness but it is you get very irritated and you don't you think well this is caused by this dreadful bank that it has no longer human beings that you can speak to or you're you're lining up airports are a great place we'll to observe small forms of unhappiness because often so many things go wrong and you're lining up and it's line up is not moving and just and of course these people that's just so inefficient I'm never going to fly with them again it's always want you feel more and more and in any of these situations if you observe ok unhappiness is arising is it really coming from the situation or is it coming from the way in which I speak to myself about the situation as it derived from the mental commentary above this situation or is it the situation and in most cases you actually find and you begin I suggest you start with little small forms of unhappiness you will find that the unhappiness is derived from the narrative is derived from yourself talk in the head you you

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Length: 22min 36sec (1356 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 12 2020