Our time's running short,
Andrew.
I have another thing I want to touch on with you here.
On page 80 and 81,
It states,
Hundreds of millions of people are right now caught in the unworthy me-trap,
Buying the condition to mine story that they are the undeserving rich.
You don't need a minder,
Go-between or redeemer.
You are the self.
A lot of people can and will find that kind of confrontational.
Explain yourself with that one a little bit.
You quoted a statement earlier from the book,
Ed,
That said,
Everything bad that you have ever believed about yourself is false.
It was just the judging play of the conditioned mind,
Just a figment of imagination.
All these stories that we've been telling ourselves and some that we've been buying into that we've been told by other people since early childhood about good and bad,
About opinions about us,
Judgments about aspects of us,
They are simply conceptual mind playing its games.
They're not truth.
They're just imagination,
Just reflections of the conditioned patterns,
Our own conditioned patterns or the conditioned patterns of the people around us who imposed these judgments of good or bad on us.
So we grow up,
A very big part of people's self-image is to do with these thoughts about good and bad,
But they aren't reality.
The essence of you is beyond judgments of good and bad.
It's beyond the conceptual mind.
And the conceptual mind can and does spend the whole of our lifetimes for most people playing this game of debating and running and chasing and running and chasing and feeling proud and then feeling guilty or ashamed.
It plays these conceptual opposite games.
And that's the nightmare of life when we're identified with the conditioned mind.
Because the conditioned mind is a realm of conceptual opposites.
So we all do what we can to have the good thoughts about ourselves be the dominant ones.
And the success with which we manage to do that varies very much from person to person.
But even the people who think well of themselves most of the time still have lurking in the background the thoughts that maybe they're not that good after all.
And some people have almost all the time this dominant feeling of shame or unworthiness,
Of not being good enough,
Of not being all that they should be,
Or just plain being bad.
And these have utterly nothing to do with reality.
They're simply thoughts.
They're simply conditioned thoughts.
And one way to see even in this moment quickly,
I know we're short of time,
One way that we can see this is that if you think of yourself as I'm a bad person,
It's just as simple as this as to ask yourself,
Was there ever a time when you thought you were a good person?
Well,
Yeah,
There were sometimes.
Has anyone else ever said,
Oh,
Good on you for doing that.
Thanks for that.
Well,
Yes,
Other people have said I was good for doing this or that.
So if bad is who you are,
How does that work if people have said you're good or if you yourself have said sometimes you're good?
But it's just complete nonsense.
So we don't need to have anybody step in on our behalf to say,
Even though you're a bad person,
I'm going to lift the burden of that badness from you so that even though you don't deserve it,
You can enjoy spiritual peace and contentment in your life.
This is false,
It's utterly false.
It's just a game of the conditioned mind,
Other people's conditioned judging minds,
Our own conditioned judging minds.
And often we buy into this because we feel there's always this lurking judgment that I'm bad or I'm unworthy in some way.
So when someone tells us,
Even though you're bad and unworthy,
I'm going to help you.
If you do this,
You believe this,
Even though you're bad,
I'll kind of,
As it were,
Overlook it and I'll give you the gift of peace that you really want.
That's a false story.
And most importantly,
It's false for this reason,
That your own feelings that you're good or bad are not anything to do with who you truly are.
You are the big S self,
As you just said in that quote,
Ed.
You are the formless,
Beautiful,
Peace-filled essence of life.
That's your very nature.
And it's simple to realize your essential nature when you begin to question your thoughts and realize that they are not true and they're not who you are.
And some other simple things around that that I describe in the book to make it a very coherent picture,
Ed,
That's been my aspiration in this book to pull into a very concise and methodical and experiential laying out for people that,
Wow,
When I notice these things,
Do these things,
I realize that bubbling up within these,
This peaceful essence of who I am,
Just more aware,
More awake,
More present.
And it feels lovely.
Why does it feel lovely?
Because the illusion of our identification with the judging conceptual mind has been seen to be a mistake.
That identity with the judging mind is a mistake.
There's no truth in the judging mind.
It's just a trick that it plays.
Well that's a lot to think about,
Andrew.
And it's a wonderful book.
People,
One thing I want you to take away from this interview is be open,
Be honest with yourself about your spirituality.
I want to thank you,
Andrew,
For being on Dead America.
And that is what Dead America is about.
Feeling dead in America,
You want to waken up spiritually.
Thank you,
Andrew.
Have a good day.
Thanks,
Ed.
Thanks to you.
