31. I understand nothing, and I understand it completely. It is the only thing I understand with certainty.
32. What stops psychological stress? You will find that out when you are completely absorbed, mentally and emotionally attentive at what you are doing, whether you are at work, home, or wherever, because at that time there is no space for feelings of frustration or stress. When you are extremely alert, watching, listening with an acute quality of psychological attentiveness, then there is no room for the mental playbacks that cause feelings of stress, frustration, or whatever other label you want to give the inward conflict that is taking place. Mental memory playbacks and reliving the past are the root source of all stress and it's buildup. So what is the solution? It is really quite simple. Be attentive! What takes place when the mind is attentive is something you can easily observe and experiment with. Notice how frustration and stress only occur when the mind psychologically plays back a memory or inwardly relives a past experience, and as a result is inattentive at what is taking place in the present moment. Notice that in a state of psychological attentiveness the mind is not in memory or even has any chance to relive the past. When the mind is not reliving the past, the past no longer occupies the mind, which means mentally the mind meets the present. As a result the mind begins to operate in a manner that is free from the past, and therefore free from frustration and stress. Psychological attentiveness is the key that instantly stops stress. It is what ends stress right now. The beauty of this is that it's not something that takes time to do. Be attentive right now wherever you are and observe what happens. Let the brain be quiet. Watch everything. Watch the spider on the web, the leaves on trees blowing in the wind, the moving shadows as the sun rises, the lungs breathing, the beating of the heart. Experiment with it. Play with it. Just play with it.
33. Freedom means having the capacity to be alone and in perfect harmony with that aloneness. It means living without psychological dependence to personal beliefs, memories, a job, or other people. Freedom means not living in a state of psychological dependence to anything. Dependence means hurt and pain. Pain denies love. Find out what it is to live your life psychologically independent of everything, and all mental pain and anguish suddenly stops. The end of dependence is the beginning of freedom. Love only exists in freedom.
34. Jealousy is inward misery and turmoil. It is the mental waste of anxiety, hurt, and conflict. Love is not conflict. That means love is not jealousy. Therefore where there is jealousy in relationship there is no love. Only when one finds out what it means to be in relationship without a trace of jealousy can love exist. Love is not something that can be held or controlled. Try to capture and it will forever slip away. Try to control it and hurt will be your only companion. Love is not hurt. Love ends hurt. It's the only thing that can.
35. Follow no one.
36. Life for most people is misery. It is stress, loneliness, boredom, jealousy, anger, fear, insecurity. All of that is inner conflict, and conflict means misery. The end of misery comes when one finds out what is the self. The discovery of the self is what destroys misery. It does away with it instantly and altogether. No idea, book, belief, or faith can end it. If it could, then misery would not exist. Misery exists because people do not realize what is the self. They are ignorant. The self is thought. It is nothing more then all of the ideas and mental images that the brain values. It is thought that not only causes misery, but it is misery itself. It is misery, because thought is you. That means when you feel fear, there is no difference between fear and you. You are it. The realization of that fact brings intelligence. It is intelligence that sees there is no division between you and fear, between the self and thought. No division means no conflict. It means the end of misery. It means the end of loneliness, boredom, and every other form of inner hurt and turmoil. Intelligence comes about with this realization, and it is intelligence that puts an end to misery. It wipes it away completely.
37. The beauty of heaven is that it does not take time to find it. It takes no time to enter. It does not take time because it has nothing to do with time. That means heaven, bliss, happiness, or whatever you want to call it, exists outside the field of time. Therefore no series of steps, no system, no book, no description, and no words are needed to come upon it. A series of steps, a system, and reading a book, all imply time. If heaven has nothing to do with time, then discard it. Discard everything that involves time, and see what happens. The end of time is the key that opens the door to heaven. It is what is left when everything that implies time is let go. Discard and abandon everything that involves, relates to, or implies time. Do that, and that which is timeless comes into being. Heaven is timeless. It is one and the same thing.
38. Loss is only felt when there is a feeling of ownership whereas if something is not owned or possessed it can never be lost. Love is not something that can be owned. Love is not a possession, which means possessiveness denies love. Find out what it is to inwardly possess nothing, and all sense of loss vanishes. Loss means hurt. It means emptiness. Love has no sense of loss, because love is not emptiness, but it is a fullness that crushes all hurt. It crushes it into nothing.
39. Be nobody and the door to the sacred other opens.
40. Love is not violence. Love has nothing to do with any form of violent behavior. That means all forms of inward and outward violence denies one from discovering what it means to love. Only when one finds out what it is to bring an end to inner violence, which means the inner violence of hate, anger, jealousy, greed, and every other form of mental division, will one find out what it is to be truly, deeply peaceful. Only when one discovers inner peace does outward violence stop. Love is not something that exists outside oneself. It is not something that one must strive to achieve at some unknown time in the future. Love only comes about when one discovers what it is to actually bring a stop to the whole movement of psychological conflict in all it's forms. The actual end of conflict happens only in the present, which means it does not take time. Only when conflict ends can a love that is timeless show itself.
41. Thought is limited. The whole of human thought must be cast out and deserted to make room for that which is unlimited and immeasurable. It must be utterly forsaken to come upon the sacred other. One must feel that no thought can put one in touch with it. Only then does it come.
42. Most people are under the impression that when they are depressed, the feelings of depression that exist inside of them are different or separate from who they are. They think depression is something apart from them that can be controlled, manipulated, or managed. The truth is when you are depressed, there is no difference between you and depression. You are that. Feelings of depression, anxiety, frustration, loneliness, boredom, and all that, occur when that psychological separation persists. If you do not try to escape from those feelings, then you no longer fuel that separation. As a result every sense of separation naturally dies out, which means all the feelings of depression, anxiety, boredom, and all the rest of it, come to stop. They end.
43. When one discovers what it is to observe without the past, which means no memory or mental images to distort the observation, then the beauty of things emerges. The beauty of a tree, a bird, and a lone cloud in a vast, open sky, reveals itself. It unfolds.
44. People continue to belong to particular political and religious organizations, which serve to separate and divide human beings. People identify with particular beliefs, which throughout history has caused social divisions, wars, famine, misery, and terrible sorrow and human suffering. Love is not division. Love ends division. That means the end of divisive living, and discovering what is love, are the same thing.
45. Psychological order is a sense of things fitting together. It is an inner sort of symmetry and harmony. It is a state in which there is no hint of mental uneasiness, confrontation, or division of any kind. The order is not a fanciful concept, belief, philosophical principle, or theory. It is a living reality that comes about when one finds out what it means to love. Love is order. The one cannot exist without the other. More deeply love ends disorder. It puts a stop to any inner problem, worry, frustration, and confusion that exists in the brain. If you love, then every sense of confusion in your life ends. Love does that. It ends confusion, and thereby brings about a sense of supreme clarity, certainty, and order to life. It is the most extraordinary thing a person can come upon.
46. You are the entire human race. Inwardly every human being on earth is you. You are the same.
47. One can never hate and love at the same time. You can never say you love one person and hate another, because a person who hates, does not love. When hate enters the room, loves flies out the window. Only when hate ends does love show itself. Love, and hate ends. It ends instantly.
48. Nature is a movement of complete and total order that touches all things. Nothing is outside the grasp of nature regardless how shocking or apprehensive. A lion killing a zebra, a volcano that kills thousands, a comet that destroys a planet with millions of beings, all exist within nature and take place within an incomprehensible and unfathomable dimension of perfect and complete order. Love exists within that same field, because it touches all things. It touches all things because love is unlimited. It has an infinite quality about it. Find out what it is to enter this field of order, to move with nature, and thereby come upon a love that has no limits, which is infinite, perfect, and therefore sacred.
49. Love is not something that can be broken into parts, and examined one piece at a time. Love is not partial, which means it is not something that can be examined piece by piece. Only when division ends does a love that is whole and complete reveal itself. The key is ending the division within oneself. Division means conflict. It is conflict as loneliness, anger, depression, hurt, fear, greed, jealousy, desire and the constant heartache and misery that goes with it. The end of conflict can only be approached as a totality, which means it must be approached as an undivided whole. Love is not division. It is wholeness, and therefore without conflict of any kind.
50. One can see by ones actions what has importance. If you embrace thought, ideas, beliefs and all that, then you embrace, identify with, and are attached to that which is limited. Watch your actions. Observe what you do. With observation there is learning. Observation makes possible for the greatest learning, which means a learning that has nothing to do with ideas, thoughts, or anything limited. It makes possible to learn what is unlimited.
51. There seems to be many people throughout the world who claim that love is something that requires a period of contemplation, thought, or analysis to attain. They say that to come upon the actuality of what is love, or what they think love is or should be, one must break it down into it's parts and examine the parts. They claim one must pick apart and analyze the components of it, and then after a period of time at some point in the future one will somehow come upon it. In the meantime what is actually taking place is one is struggling and analyzing. It is the act of struggle and analysis that denies love from revealing itself. Love has nothing to do with analysis. Analysis implies time, and love has nothing to do with time. The moment struggle enters the front door, love flies out the back. They are two different things. Find out what it means to bring an end to struggle and the opportunity for love is made possible. The one can never happen without the other.
52. If you remain attached to a form of thought, to the thought of a spouse, the thought of a religious belief, or the thought of anything, then you will never find out what it means to be free. Attachment denies freedom. Do not ignore that tremendous fact. Stay with it. Stay with it and internalize it.
53. Love is not jealousy. Love has nothing to do with inner hurt. Jealousy is inner hurt, misery, or any of that madness. Love is not madness. That means where there is jealousy in a relationship there is no love. Jealousy and possessiveness go hand in hand. People who possess others and place conditions on others for their love is the cause for conflict in relationship. But where there is great devotion, affection and love for another there are no conditions placed on that love. Love has no conditions. A true and real love is unconditional. A truly loving relationship is devoid of self interest, manipulation and possessiveness, which means it is a relationship in which jealousy has no place. Jealousy is psychological insecurity and conflict. Love is not conflict. Love wipes away conflict. It is the only thing that can. Therefore a loving relationship involves no possessiveness of any kind. When you have a love free of possessiveness, then there is no room for any feelings of jealousy, hurt, or being unloved. People feel hurt and unloved because they do not love. Find out what it means to love another without possessiveness of any kind. If you do that, then anger, jealousy, inner hurt, and any and all feelings of being unloved evaporate. They disappear completely.
54. It seems that every form of social violence that has ever existed and goes on throughout the world today begins with the conflict that exists in the individual. Conflict in the individual means aggression, ambition, greed, jealousy, hate, depression, loneliness, and all the rest of it. Social violence is rooted in psychological conflict, and therefore the end of psychological conflict is the first step necessary to build a nonviolent society. The question one must ask oneself is if it possible for a common and ordinary person, someone like you and me, to bring an end to psychological conflict. Is it within the capabilities of the human mind to find out what it means to live without inward conflict in daily living, or are people doomed to eternal struggle, strife, and therefore suffering? It seems that the answer to this question must have a deeply profound and mysterious quality about it because the reality of living peacefully and finding out what it means to bring an end to the psychological conflict in one’s life has escaped human beings for centuries. As a result the world in which we live today is as dangerous and violent as ever. At first this may seem like an impossible question, because most of us have been told by society that inward conflict is a normal part of everyday life. Society believes it is natural to feel anger, hate, ambition, fear, greed, and all the inner tension and turmoil that goes with it. However if one has an open mind, and does not blindly accept or identify with what has been handed down by society, then suddenly the opportunity arises to explore the question anew. The writer does not accept a thing society has to offer with regard to this issue because society is a mess. Society has created beliefs, philosophies, ideals, and theories, with the hope of dealing with social violence and inward conflict, but people remain as violent as ever. People continue to suffer as they have suffered for thousands of years. So basically, what is psychological conflict? It is safe to say that psychological conflict is a division that exists in the mind. Conflict means division. Therefore it is a state of inward dividedness that is not separate from the mind. It is obvious that psychological conflict includes every form of inward fight, anxiety, stress and sorrow, that takes place in the mind. It is not something outside of you. That means it is not a disconnected object that one can control or manipulate, because it is in fact not separate from you. That means when you are angry, anger is not different from you. You are anger. When you feel lonely, you are not different from loneliness. You are loneliness. It is a common misconception that anger, loneliness, and any other form of psychological conflict, is something that takes place outside or apart from oneself. To maintain that fallacy perpetuates the dividedness that exists in the mind. It sustains the fallacy that psychological conflict can be controlled, managed, handled, suppressed, or otherwise manipulated. That means any action taken by you to try to remove conflict can never work. Any action by a mind that is in conflict sustains conflict. What happens when the realization occurs that there is in fact no difference between the conflict that exists in me and me? What happens to the mind that suddenly sees is not separate from conflict? I am faced with the tremendous fact that I am conflict, and conflict equals me. There is no difference between conflict and “the me”. They are the same. The insight that the me and conflict are the same brings an end to the division. It ends the separation within. The end of separation means the end of conflict. It means the mind undergoes a transformation. The mind changes and that change gives rise to a mind completely devoid of division, which mans it is totally absent of any and all conflict. The mind that sees this has thereby taken the first and last step towards bringing about a real, fundamental change in the human condition, because the end of conflict is no longer a struggle, goal, or idea. Instead it is a living, vibrant, breathing reality that makes possible for a new way of living without division, and therefore with a sense of wholeness. What takes place is the discovery of an inner wholeness that knows no division or conflict of any kind. What happens is extraordinary. Explore it for yourself. Experiment with it. Put away all distractions, and with every ounce of energy you can muster, go into it. Just go into it.
55. The birds were chirping happily. People chatted as they walked to town and the sound of passing cars could be heard nearby. The room was filled with a deafening silence. Breathing was quiet, and a soft, gentle stillness permeated the body. A sense of extraordinary fulfillment occupied the brain. It came from nowhere. There was the presence of a richness, fullness, and some sort of sacred other. It was deep, touched everything, and remained for a long time. The intimate nature of the thing was indescribable. One must be careful not to desire the repetition of such a thing, mentally project anything, or fall prey to hope or illusion. One must be completely and utterly indifferent to it. Only then does it seem to come. What a shy thing it seems to be. In a heart beat it can disappear and leave without a trace. It is shameful to try to put it into words. Words can never come close to it. Words cannot describe it rightly and perfectly, which is what it deserves.
56. The total absence of desire must take place for that which is holy and sacred to reveal itself. Desire is the activity of the self. The self, the ego, the me, or whatever you want to call it, can never come upon that which is sacred. The self is the barrier that denies the other. Wipe away every trace of desire and suddenly all sense of the self disappears. Only then can the other be invited. Desire is a movement of mental image making which means memory, the past, and therefore time. This other, this extraordinary holiness and sacredness is not bound to time, which means only when the mind finds out what it means to bring an end to psychological time, which means the whole activity of image making, does that which is timeless come into being.
57. The purpose of life is to live it completely, passionately, and fearlessly as if today was your last day on earth. It means if you stand next to a giant redwood, feel the warmth of an afternoon sun, hear the sound of a passing car, or observe a lone bird in flight, then sense the gentle vastness of it. Feel the immensity and sacredness of it. It's there. It reveals itself when the mind is quiet, and the activity of the movement of thought subsides.
58. The wind howled and blew the window shades up and down. The green, orange, and yellow leaves danced about, back and forth, calling out playfully. The trunk of the great tree stood firm and unmoving. The wind could not budge it. Its strength seemed impenetrable. It was only a matter of time before the leaves would die, fall to the ground as would the great tree. The life of leaves and trees are measured. They are measurable. Love is not measurable. Love has no beginning or end, which means it is not subject to decay or death. Love either exists or it does not, which means only when the mind empties itself of all that is measurable does that which is immeasurable come into being. Everything that exists in memory is measurable. Ideas and thoughts exist in memory, which means thought is measurable. As a result thought denies love. Find out what it is to let go of the whole of thought, and therefore discard every personal belief, ideal, opinion, and all memories that one gives value. If you do that, then love is made possible. The wind began to grow stronger and more powerful. It blew dead leaves, twigs, and debris on the sidewalk. Leaves and debris covered the ground and street. The wind grew in force but the great tree remained steadfast, untouchable.
59. Where there is the self there is the seed of ambition, greed, anger, jealousy, loneliness, despair, and all the sorrow that goes with it. The self is the whole movement of psychological possessiveness to ideas, thought, and memory. It is this mental possessiveness that causes sorrow. When possessiveness to ideas and thought stops, an entirely new field of life reveals itself which knows no sorrow. That means death of the self is not an end, but a beginning. It is the beginning of an entirely new way of life that knows no sorrow of any kind. The death of the self is the key that ends sorrow. Find out what it means to inwardly die to every idea, thought, and memory to which you identify, consider of value, and psychologically possess. Do that, and the whole insanity of human sorrow ends. It ends completely.
60. The present holds everything. To be in touch with the present means to be highly alert. It means listening, feeling, carefully looking. Like a hungry eagle watching for the slightest movement in the grass below, it means to be alert to what is happening both outwardly around oneself and inwardly within oneself. That is the only way to enter and move with the present. Don't analyze it. Do it.
