Get off the roller coaster of life

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

And so if we realize I'm always chasing an up and I know for a fact that every up comes with a down, then what's the point? What's the point of living like this? Why not live like this? Right? And um thrill seeking is an emotional thing, obviously. We feel bad, so we want to do something to feel good, good. And so we're constantly chasing that which makes us feel good, but it is no different than an addiction to anything else. The person who is addicted to, I don't know, alcohol, whatever it is, uh they wake up and they haven't, they didn't drink anything for six, eight hours because they were sleeping, they feel bad. They feel bad. They're shaking and they're restless and they're they're have they're sweating, and uh, I don't know what's happening. And they naturally want to feel better. And so they drink a lot of alcohol, and then and then the shaking stops, and the sweating stops, and the trembling stops, and the anxiety also of you know, chemicals in the brain, whatever. Uh, all that calms down a bit. And so they say, ah, this is my medicine, this is my potion. But eventually, either they will die from this practice, or they will realize it is actually the high that is bringing me the low. I am addicted to the high, and the addiction entails the low. And so, as long as I administer the substance, I will always shake, I will always tremble. And so the solution is not to drink more and not to drink less, but to drink not at all. And just like the alcoholic, once again, when we are told we must stop thrill seeking if we ever want to be healthy and at peace, we say, but I can't even imagine a life without alcohol. How can I ever live without the substance? And we say the same thing about thrill seeking. How can I ever live without thrills? Is what makes my life thrilling. Thrills are make my life exciting. Thrills are make my what are what make my life uh enjoyable. So am I supposed to live without excitement, without enjoyment, without happiness? This is what we think. And it's the same again, the substance abuser who says, but this brings me joy. Without this, I feel miserable. So am I supposed to so am I supposed to live in this miserable state for the rest of my life? That uh how I feel when I wake up, shaking, trembling, and not nauseous? Is this how I'm supposed to live? I would rather drink and die from that than to live like this. But we tell the alcoholic, no, this is because you're administering the substance that you feel this way. If you didn't administer the substance, yes, you will feel worse. Yes, you will feel worse for several days, perhaps weeks, perhaps months. But eventually, when you are uh off of the substance, you will have a quality of life that not only matches, but far exceeds your quality of life that you had when you were drinking. It's so parallel, it's amazing. And it's the same with the thrill seeker. Yes, the thrills will be gone. Yes, your highs will be gone. Yes, that excitement, that so-called what you think is joy, and when I say you, I mean all of us, what we think as joy, yes, that will be gone, but we will realize that what we call joy was never joyous. That what we called peace was never peace. And now, now that the substance is gone, the receptors are finally able to receive peace, true peace, true joy, true contentment for the very first time. But something needs to give, something needs to make place. Right now, your peace receptors, and again, when I say you, I mean everyone, this is this is human nature, your peace receptors are blocked by thrills. The the thrill comes into the receptor and you think, ah, relief. And that wears away, and then the receptor is open again, and you say, Oh no, uh emptiness. I feel emptiness, as if emptiness is a bad thing, by the way. This is another thing we realize when we get off the thrill seeking. Emptiness, so-called stillness, is the most stable, the most beautiful, the most amazing state to be in, and it is a it is a state that can be sustained. No high, whether from a substance or from thrill seeking, no high can be sustained. A thrill is is excess. Thrill is we wait for something, we accumulate something, then we release it at once. All week I've been waiting to go to work and to hear compliments for the project that I completed. And so all that's bundled up. I come into work and everyone's like, well, good job, great. Uh, and we're gonna give you more money and we're gonna we love you more. And I get excitement from that, I get a thrill from that, but that cannot be sustained. They cannot praise me for the next 30 years or even the next 10 minutes, and so anything and everything can be a thrill. We need to know this inside of us. What do I do to get a thrill? I need to know that. And why do I do it? What is it in my life that I am looking forward to? Because as long as I'm looking forward, I cannot look at the now. As long as I am anticipating, I cannot love what is here. Because if I loved what is here, why would I be looking at something else? If I'm looking forward to meet my cat, but the cat's right here on my lap, then I wouldn't be looking fantasizing about how beautiful it's going to be when I have my cat on my lap again because my cat is in my lap. But that's what we do with life. We say, This is not good enough. This is not good enough for me. And so that's why I go into imagination, I go into fantasy, I go into hmm, what can get me? What can enhance this? And again, this can be anything: people, relationships, substances, uh achievements, anything, money, anything, or all of them. The issue is not that your life is lacking. The what is lacking is the vision of the completeness of your life. And I can say that to anyone without knowing what their life is. Because history we have a record of, people we know of, data we have secured, and it shows us in every time in human history, on every continent, in every moment imaginable, there has been a human being that has accepted it, that has welcomed it, that has found meaning, and that has seen completion in it. This is fact. This is fact. We read people again, I will always go back to it. It's it's just too perfect. The Holocaust. We read Viktor Frankel, we just uh read another uh book in our book club about Edith Eager. Um they all say the same thing. And in fact, uh uh the that last book that we read, she's uh just like Viktor Frankel, she's a psychiatrist, psychologist, whatever you want to call it. And in the very beginning, she talks about one client who had something quite big happen. I don't know, maybe someone died or something, and and that's why they came in for therapy. And another woman came in, and her sorrow, her misery was that the Cadillac she ordered was in the slightly wrong color than the one she ordered. And uh Edith Eager in this book says, Don't think that one misery is bigger than the other one. They both are experiencing misery in the same way. The the wrong color Cadillac is just as miserable to that person as the death of a loved one is to the other. Misery is the same, and so you are not lacking anything. This is what everyone goes through. Every single person and not only goes through, but most people never come out of this. Not because they're not able to, not because they're not able to, but because they've never been shown another option. And we don't always have to be shown, sometimes life just shows us, but uh we do things because we think there is no other option. We do things because this is how they've been done. And even though I have this idea of, oh, maybe I don't really need to be doing this, and I look around for inspiration, I look around for a living example, and I cannot see one. I say, I must be strange, I must be weird, this is never going to, and so I still go with that other option. And so what we need is our living examples. And especially in our time, we don't even need to know a living example personally to know that they have existed, to know what has happened. And living examples, we have plenty. Whether you like Buddha or Jesus or Socrates or Victor Funkel or your friend next door, or someone here in this uh Discord community, it doesn't matter who it is. If you look for it, you will find it. And what comes from the lips of all of these people, Buddha, Jesus, Socrates, anyone you want to think of, they say, you are no different than I am. Everything I can do, you can do. Otherwise, why would I be speaking to you? Why would they die on the cross to spread this idea? Why? Why would Socrates drink the poison if not every if this was not for everyone? If this was an exclusive thing, he would have gone into his uh very rich and wealthy friend houses, held private little gatherings, and said, Listen, this is truth, this is peace. But he did not do that, he talked to anyone and everyone, and they all got something from it. It's an option, it's a choice. And just like the addict, we think, even though now we see the choice, that we cannot bear it, that we are not strong enough, that we are too deep into it, that we are have been doing this for too long, that we are too old, or that we live in a place that uh requires this. This is all what every single addict goes through, every single one. And this is why it overcoming addiction is not an automatic thing, it takes a certain realization, and that realization is nothing other than if this person can do it, I can do it too. This is fact, this is irrefutable. I am not taking even objections on this one. Human nature is one. There is no dish human nature and this human nature and this human nature, which one are you? No, there is one human nature, one single human nature. And uh another irrefutable fact is you are a human being. So, simply by that fact, I know that you can stop thrill seeking, and that you then will see what peace is truly like, what stability really means. And uh every single thing that anyone can do in this realm of ideas, I'm not saying you can be an Olympic athlete just because someone else became an Olympic athlete. That's not what I'm saying. But in the in the spiritual realm, every single person in potential is identical. And it does you you can say I'm stupid, you can say I'm poor, you can say these things. But truth does not require wealth, truth does not require intelligence, truth uh only asks for, not requires, asks for, if you want me, it says, give me dedication. Dedication. What is dedication? Dedication is simply to keep choosing one thing over another, to keep choosing water over alcohol. The alcoholic will say, Water is so bland, water is so uninteresting. But you do it enough, and you wake up in the morning and you feel one hundred thousand times better than any drink can ever make you feel. Just water, which is the most available, most sustainable, most plentiful, cheapest, and purest thing there is, and so it is with emotion versus reason. And thrill seeking is emotion seeking, and reason requires nothing of you. Reason says you are good just the way you are, and I am always with you. You do not have to chase me. I am not an award, I am not a reward, I am not a fleeting thing, I am forever yours. I was always there sitting in the corner as you were thrill seeking. I was always with you, I was always watching you. And again, for our friends who like to defend the emotions, I am not against the emotions. The emotions need not need to be suppressed or ignored or killed, even. No, not at all. I am merely saying when we are coming to a decision point, when we're asking, how should we raise our children? How should we vote? How should we conduct our lives? We should not go ask emotion. We should go ask reason. Yet when we are thrill seeking, we are asking emotion how to conduct our lives. Isn't that what we're doing? Because thrill seeking says this is a thrill. In order to get it, you have to get on the bus and do this and go there and it can experience this. So we're conducting our lives based on what emotion is telling us. Emotion is not there as a guide. Again, nothing wrong with emotion. Emotion is not your enemy. Human beings feel emotions, and it's the most beautiful thing. And when you feel anger, it's a signal. Something is wrong. Okay, reason. Please come over. Can you look what's wrong, please, so that we can deal with it? Rather than saying, oh no, I'm angry, I need to take revenge, I need to go destroy, I need to go kill. No, we say, hold on, hold on, stop. Anger just means something's gone wrong. It's a beautiful notification system. Without you even intellectually having to analyze the situation, it says, look, something's wrong. Please pay attention. And then you can have reason come in and say, Ah, interest. Okay, I will take that notification notification, I will see what's wrong. Beautiful. This is the role of emotion, this is the role of reason. They're working together. But when we make an altar for emotion and we worship day and night, and we burn incense at it, and reason is just sitting in the corner, that's when we are living a life of roller coaster, of high and low, and life and death. We die every day, and then we need to be reborn every day with them with the roller coaster. But but peace is eternal life. And so why keep dying? Why keep killing? Why keep suffering when you can have eternal life? I'll tell you why, because it's too boring. Everything is too jacked up, everything is too heightened with this drug. This drug is so overwhelming, so exciting that when we're off of it, we can hardly feel anything, we can hardly hear anything and sense anything. Because we're too amped up, everything is too overwhelmed, everything is too stretched. But if we stop administering and all that calms down and settles in and is not stretched out, but comes back to its natural healthy shape, we can now see the eternal indestructible, changeless stability that is peace. And within peace there is joy, within peace there is approval, within peace there is uh the most human of joys and again sustainable, always there, never asking you to prove yourself to it, never threatening you with leaving. But in order to have that, you must give up that which you think you cannot do without. Think you cannot do without. That is the only thing between you and peace is this belief that you cannot do without this uh cruel uh master that you have adopted at some point in your life because someone told you or something happened and it it lured you in by saying, I will give you, I will give you an escape, I will make you feel better. And so they they made yourself necessary to you. But the only thing you must realize now, this is not, this is a captor. This is an exploitation. I am not getting anything from this, I am dying. This is what they'll seeking does. So all you have to focus on now, if you want to get this is your decision, this is your life, you do whatever you want with it, no one gets to tell you otherwise. No one. You have the right to suffer, you have the right to be at peace, it is your choice, completely up to you. Uh, no one gets to tell you what to do. But if you decide to choose peace, all you must do is stop administering the drug. Go within yourself and say, hmm, technically, you know, I'm just gonna go pick up trash because I don't want thrills anymore. I'm just gonna pick up, I'm just gonna make my community cleaner. Uh but inside yourself, you must see that this too is a thrill. If it is, I'm not saying it is. If you can say, ah, but I will be seen picking up trash, and that will give me a very good feeling. And I can mask this thrill to reason by saying, Oh, I'm just picking up trash. I'm doing a beautiful, reasonable thing. But no, deep within yourself, you know that this is also just thrill seeking. And so that's when you have to say, enough. I will not allow this, I will not pick up trash then. Even though that would genuinely be the right thing to do, and it would be a beautiful thing to do for my community and myself and my environment, I will not do it because there's thrill in it. There's the drug hidden in it, and I will not, under no circumstances, will administer it anymore. And that only you can know, because everything can be done for thrill seeking. Charity people do for thrill seeking, but charity also people do for no thrill seeking at all, just because it's the right thing to do. So, how can we tell the difference between the thrill seeker and charity and between the rightful person? We cannot. Only they themselves know this. Only they themselves know as they're giving the donation. Ooh, I'm getting I'm getting a high from this. I am so I have never given this much money. This is so thrilling. Or they they don't even anonymous, right? Sometimes they just mail the money to the place and you don't even know who it is. So only we can know who we are. Only we can know the anonymous donor. And only we can know the thrill seeker. And this is up to you now. This is a choice. You can do this in your life. You you wake up and you say, What shall I do? What's for breakfast? The thrilling thing? Opening up the phone and looking at emails and uh whatever. Is that what we're gonna do? Or are we gonna do anything but that because it's still sticky? It's a moment-by-moment choice. And the emotions will come in, the resistance will come in. I'm not saying it will, I shouldn't say that. That's another narrative, that's just another thought. For some people it does, for some people it doesn't. I'm just saying, in case that thought's coming and emotions coming and resistance comes in, telling you you can't do this, it's too difficult. That you only need to see. Because this is this happens for everyone. This happened for Jesus, this happened for Buddha, this happened for Socrates. The thoughts came in and they said, You are not good enough. You cannot do this, you cannot persevere in this. You cannot live without this. You are worthless, you are incompetent. The thoughts came for these people as well. The difference is they said, Come in and sit down. I will not escape you. Come in, stay as long as you want. You're welcome to it. Here's some tea. And then the thoughts and emotions that the fear and the judgment, they're sitting there and they say, This person is just invited us for tea. They're not afraid of us. And so we will do our best, we will do use all our scare tactics, we will use all our methods, and we'll see, maybe they will break. But once we do all that, once we've exhausted our methods, we're gonna leave, we're gonna go try someone else. So they might come to you, they might try you, and they might do things you've never seen them do before. But they cannot touch you, they never were able to. They're only good in seeming real. This is the one ability, one objective skill that fear has to seem real. It's very good at that. But it is not, and you will just have to either trust that, and and once you see it, of course, uh also just completely believe it. Uh, or you can keep running away from fear and never letting it touch you. Because if you just let it touch you, you would see it is not real, it has no substance, it's a projection. But I cannot just say that to you and you you feel it and you see it. You this needs to happen for you in your own realm when everything's when no one's there, when all the lights are out. Fear needs to come, and then you need to decide what you're gonna do, if you're gonna keep running away or if you're gonna uh see what this is all about. Because you can say, I'm an addict anyway. This addiction is going to death. There's no other end to this if I keep coming. So anything's better than death. And so let it come. Let's see what this is. Either it will kill me before the addiction, or I will actually realize that this is not real and there's peace and salvation behind it. But anything's better than this. So this is up to you. I just want to tell you that uh you need to watch yourself, you need to be aware of yourself, you need to uh every single thing that you know deep down, even if it's just in some corner of your mind, that the little voice that says this is a thrill, you need to see that. And you need to then abstain from whatever it is that you know is a thrill. It might also be charity, it might also be logical, it might also be the caring thing to do, it might also help with your taxes, whatever it is. But if it is also a thrill, do not do it. And if you keep this up long enough, the thrills will just leave and they will try someone else.