"There is a series of pains and sufferings that have its way with the
average man, average woman. A human being who has not found himself, who
does not live by spiritual rules, has no alternative but to live from one
shock to the next one, from one self-doubt to the next self-doubt. And no
one knows it better than you, because you, you are proving by your life the
truth of what I'm telling you.
Now you know that outburst you had, when was it, when's the last outburst
you had, even blared out with your mouth, shouted something, got
exasperated and volcanic, that was pain, was it not? See, the pain was
always there, you were just hiding it. When's the last time you sighed
and sighed wearily over your life, your un-life, and wondered if it's
worthwhile, what it's all about?
Now that weariness, please listen to what I'm telling you, so that you can
learn how to do something about it, that weariness was always with you. You
just had a phony front that you put on, on your face and on your manner,
thinking that perhaps if you didn't let yourself see it, you wouldn't
feel it. But you didn't succeed did you, you felt it all the time.
A person who does not know himself, who may be quite religious, quite
philosophical, quite active, quite busy, quite wealthy, a person who has
not found reality experiences just two things, two kinds of experiences.
You'll see how true this is when I tell you what they are. You have what
you call good experiences and what you call bad experiences. And they're
all bad because even the good ones are simply feeding a certain false
position in you, which likes to get exhilarated and say, 'Ah, that time I
won, that time I scored a win, that time I made a little gain,' but the
fact that you have to try to convince yourself that it was a gain means
that it was a loss.
Now there is a third choice and this is a very important point early in
this talk for you to listen to what I'm going to tell you. You must
abandon your love for mere good and bad experiences and, instead of those
two awful choices, have experiences that make you feel alive."
from a talk given 2/10/1988 V. H.'s Higher World - MP3 CD Volume 18, talk 433, track 1
