Belzebuub

After the walk.

Belzebuub: I just want to recap and see how we got on, on that walk. Let's get some comments.

Q: It definitely seemed achievable when the setting is so inviting for the awareness, its just that it's very different when things get uncomfortable physically, like when I was walking, it's infinitely harder than when I was walking even on a flat surface, just, any sort of external complication makes it that much harder to be clear internally.

Belzebuub: That applies when there's pain in the body too; it can make it more difficult. The thing to take into account right now is the effort you were making at the time, whether you were trying when going down the mountain or not, because we can learn something going down the mountain, even when it's more difficult.

Q: I found that I saw more - I saw a lot of the times when ideas about what is achievable for me in terms of the state that I'm in hold me back, and that when I do try for it, I can get more to where I want to be. I think there's also just obstacles that are there, so obviously I'm not where I want to be all the time, but I also just saw that when I didn't listen to the things that my mind was saying I could break them down, and that even though I'm not saying I necessarily fully succeeded in breaking free of everything on this walk, I just saw the potential that I could do that, that I could just get rid of that stuff, just break free of it.

Belzebuub: So you saw the potential for breaking free of it, which is really good.

Pride

Q: I saw something that keeps me from breaking through: it seems whenever I get to a good state, there's a pattern that comes in, usually associated with pride, especially when we're walking in a group. So, I'll get a state and then see someone, and that will start a thought, just comparing myself to that person, being more aware, which obviously makes me not aware. And just realizing how difficult it is to constantly break out of that, because every time I get it, it's waiting for me. Every time I get clear; it's taken away from me because I have a judgement about someone else, in relation to my clarity.

Belzebuub: So what ego is doing that judging?

Q: Pride.

Belzebuub: Pride, alright, because pride, being that octopus with many tentacles, has got many different aspects. In that case, you could say its tentacle is mystical pride, but pride then goes into daily life, doesn't it, so it's not just on a walk that you're going to see this ego. Where else are you going to find it?

Q: In any activity, considering yourself in relation to other people.

Q: When you're on your own, pride comes out a lot. Just in those thoughts.

Belzebuub: Why is pride harmful?

Q: Because it keeps you from wanting to better yourself.

Belzebuub: Why's that?

Q: Because when you're in a state of pride, you feel like you're good enough, you don't need to do anything to change.

Q: It gives a lot of reasons for the other egos to work as well.

Belzebuub: Yes, so pride then brings about fear, but it deceives us, because we really think that we're in the right, or we really think that we know. We can have something that many people call humility, which is actually pride in disguise, where we might say, “Oh no, I don't really know much, oh no, you know more...”, and all that sort of stuff. When we try to be humble, we're not. Beneath it is pride. You can't really try to be humble. You can be aware of pride, but with real humility we see things as they are. That is to be truly humble. It's not to put ourselves in the opposite place of where we assert ourselves to be with pride. That's just pride at work.

Pride affects all sorts of things in life, but basically it makes us pretty stupid, because we can't learn when we've got pride. We just try to add to this mass of information and knowledge, to make ourselves feel more and make ourselves feel better. But we're just a better monster, we're not really better in the true sense.

Everywhere in the world, people are trying to assert themselves – to make themselves first, the best, and so on. And it's really not a good way to live. It's actually quite an unpleasant thing. And everybody then has to compete with somebody else, that's just the way animals work. So we here are hopefully aiming to learn without pride, to get rid of that pride, which is such an obstacle. What place does it have here? Spiritually, what place does pride have?

The divine beings are not going to go along with the fantasy of a proud person who says, “I'm the best, I'm the most aware, I can be more aware for longer than anybody else.” This person thinks a lot himself; he may even think more of himself than anybody else present and believes he should have more than others have; but it’s all part of the illusion of pride.

Q: It's not really what you think, it's what you do, it's what you are that matters.

Belzebuub: Yes. So what's the trouble with someone being proud then?

Q: They just think that they're a certain way, but they won't actually hold up to it, they won't act the same as they think they are...

Belzebuub: Yes.

Q:… or how they should, they're not being aware, they're living in their own world in the mind.

Belzebuub: That's right. And then, life constantly challenges that little world. And then... there's fear, which is an outcome of pride. So we get locked in the horrible realm of fear, and with that fear and being locked in that horrible realm, we then think more of ourselves, because we have to somehow internally compensate as it were. So, we get locked in a shell of pride and fear, and try to compete, try to do things well within a certain field, in order to, we could say, succeed – but it's not real success.

And that pride is very, very crippling. You could get a person, someone in a position of power, who says with pride, “Do this, because I say it.”  They can make terrible mistakes like that and involve very many people. And like that you see dictators and tyrants all around the world, thinking they're doing the right thing, whereas in reality it's just pride. And then there's enormous suffering from their mistakes; they have actually been made stupid by pride. Because that's a consequence of it – we get really stupid. So, pride hasn't got a place in any sort of spiritual meeting. But in case anyone is thinking that there's only one person with pride here...

<Laughter>

...everybody has that ego. So because somebody has said they feel pride, your own pride can make you feel better than that person. Likewise the person who said they have pride may feel better because their pride tells them that they were humble enough to be able to say they felt pride, considering that all the others might have been too proud to have said it in the first place.

Alright, so all this is ridiculous. It’s important to work on the egos while here, because they are obstacles to spiritual development and to spiritual experience. All these things were going on in a walk -- and that was just one example. There were the deer, running away at these monsters coming towards them, full of all these different states. These states are completely out of place if we want to be silent in nature. If you perceive that moment of silence, then you see that the egos can have no part in it. Can you see that? If you were there in that moment of silence, the egos were out, even if it was just for a moment. And then there was clarity, and then we were here. We were aware. Then there was a certain sense of peace, a certain silence, even if it was momentarily. But it's that silence that we need to get throughout daily life.

In this place, we can build up a bit of strength, but we've got to take it back to daily life. If we don't do that, it's just a holiday. We've got to take the strength that we can gain from this and use it, not slide into what everybody else is doing. Not take the easy way.

If we want real spirituality we need to make sacrifices, but then we get the rewards. We're not going to make sacrifices in order to get nothing – it would be stupid. Except that in some cases, the reward is not as we expect, and generally, they're hidden from view of everybody else. It's a reward that only the individual can get. So, even if you gain something spiritually, nobody's going to really shout and celebrate: firstly, because everybody's too proud to do that anyway, and secondly, because nobody can really see it. It's an internal thing, and unfortunately, internal things are not really valued by society. What's valued are the cars, the houses, the jobs (if good jobs), the fame, prestige, and all this.

As a society, real spiritual things are not valued. But individuals can find out the real value of spirituality with practice, practice of the different exercises we've got here. And hopefully in that walk, if you got to a moment of silence, you see something of a value there, because that is a better way to be than full of egos. Even if there's pleasure, the pleasure brings pain. But the inner silence brings nothing negative; it's in itself something of value. So that's a better state to be in than negative and reacting.

Now, that's only the start. That's just a tiny thing. What can be gained is just enormous, but everybody has to take a step in the dark. You can't see what's just ahead. And when sacrifices need to be made, the easy thing is to back off, as though no one can see what's happening. But everything is seen; everything is known by the divine hierarchs, so there's no fooling them. Nobody gets away with anything.

So, I think now we can eat, but this time, let's try to eat aware, so that we carry this through. The egos might have been looking forward to the minor pleasure of talking and gossiping, or whatever. But, since this is a valuable time, and the egos have had a lot of time to gossip until now and to chatter away, we'll put the time of eating to practice so that we eat aware and without these silly egos getting in the way, like pride and so on, or any others. It's just a simple thing, just going to eat, maybe drink something, very, very simple.

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