It is essential to know who we are and how we interact with life and the world around us. Many of us in a moment or in chronic situations face others’ stupidity, fear and ignorance. All of us know this. But what we have to see is our own unceasing negativity, often rationalized or excused because of external conditions or others being the way they are.
This cannot happen in our work. If one is in a situation that is intolerable you can leave the situation or if you can’t, work with it as best you can. Seeing our negativity, not others, is our work. Freeing up our negativity and reactional part is what we have to do.
We need to create in us over time a certain level of energy that can help us resist surrounding influences and external situations. This is essential. And that energy, if present in us, allows us to open to an even higher energy that is more active and intelligent.
Our focus is not on others negativity, but on ourselves – noticing our energy, attention and whether a finer energy and attention is present. A finer attention allows us to relate the whole of ourselves to a higher force. This is the work. We experience in ourselves something higher, finer, a different quality – different from how I ordinarily am.
We have this higher, finer inner life and we have the life we lead and live. Being awake means being awake to both these, not grasping at one over the other, but being awake to both realities – living in two worlds.
Our constant need to affirm our place in the world, control it, to have what we want, creates in us fear and the need to be reassured. We get swept along constantly and will until we create in ourselves and learn to turn to another part in ourselves. A part that for now may be unknown.
Make this real.