Conversations 2002
Five Conversations
The following are snippets of conversations recorded with students.
People usually don’t appreciate the respect, goodness and love that is given to them, because they live in an animal state. They regard those qualities as weakness and even look down on them; when in fact those qualities are the highest ones and they belong to higher, spiritual realms.
Brisbane, Australia, 2002
First Conversation
Just as athletes train for their sport, so to do we, who wish to be aware, need to train. But due to the nature of awareness, uncompromised massive efforts are required to succeed in it. The standards to succeed on the path, require the disintegration of our psychological defects. If we don’t do that, we won’t make it. Training is therefore important - turn your actions into concentrated practices.
We need to be ready to go through the pain of the inner death. We are facing a massive wall of life and it takes huge efforts to break it. The pull of life is very strong, and we have to break the chains of nature. Consider what it will take to put yourself through this, and then do it.
Set yourself a program of work; change your perspective of what it is to do it, as the whole of your psychological make up must undergo a change.
Second Conversation
Discipline is essential in daily life, to be able to break habits, cut out mistakes and to shift the psychological centre of gravity so that it revolves around Gnosis, around esotericism – everything should be used to help us to become spiritual.
Also, the spiritual centre of gravity has to be created, to enable us to think about the inner death of the psychological defects more. The starting point is to organise Gnostic things into your daily life and to concentrate upon the things you are doing, to get the strength for this you have to be singled-minded from the beginning of the day.
To break the grip that daily life has on us, we need discipline and that creates an order. Then we do things we need to do, not the things we want to do.
Third Conversation
To give spiritual talks, you need to place yourself within, talk from your own experience and convey to the audience something you have done; you can learn how to speak while being aware, by practising it again and again.
Also, when you’re speaking, it’s possible to ask (pray) even if you don’t put it into words - the initial feeling of asking is there, but you don’t follow it up with words.
Regarding a change of motivation - the mind compels and directs everyone, so thought usually drives us. To combat this, there has to be a longing for the spiritual and an inner dedication that trains the mind to remember to self-observe. Then wherever you are, you can use the situation for self-discovery and the destruction of negative states. If you only remember to do it occasionally, you won’t get very far.
Fourth Conversation
Consider what you can do to assist your inner work. Try to do it as you think best, but it’s actually only going to be done by you storming it; it is not going to be done simply with the passing of time.
Inner change requires inner shock. If that doesn’t happen, nothing will happen. Aspiring for spirituality alone, won’t bring about radical change. There are requirements that have to be fulfilled correctly.
Fifth Conversation
If we do things in the usual mechanical, half-asleep way, they will be just actions, the same as those done every day, by anyone in the mundane world. But if we do them while aware, their significance is substantially altered.