by Guy Finley
There lives nothing real in our past—regardless of how disappointing or painful it may have been—that can grab us and make us its captive, any more than dark shadows have the power to keep us from walking into the sunlight.
Meet your Teacher
Grants Pass, OR, USA
Transcript
I don't know how many of you actually look at the topic and the key lesson ahead of the actual Insight timer session, But we have a topic, A subject today that I'm going to look at through a certain kind of light, And I'm going to invite you to see it that way with myself, And it'll be very conducive to our study if you follow along realizing the experience that you have that parallels what we're going to look at, But without getting caught up when you remember this in the memory itself. So let's have a nice start. Just to set the stage, How many of you get the blues? How many of you know what the blues are? And I'm not talking about Miles Davis or any other jazz musician. Do we get the blues? Everybody knows what the blues are. I want to make sure. It may be a Western phrase, But basically the blues is a word that describes a sort of down and out kind of woe is me, Self-pity, A fairly common state for most of us increasingly these days where I read that some huge proportion of men and women are on some kind of psychotropic drug to deal with one form or another of the blues. But there's a strange and completely unseen contradiction in this state called the blues, Feeling sorry for ourselves that I want to look at with you so that through this kind of contradistinction that we can begin to recognize where it is that there's a very strange phenomena in this feeling sorry for ourselves. And that is that when we're really feeling sorry for ourselves, It actually is a consoles us. You have to step outside of your usual thinking. When I feel sorry for myself, Part of feeling sorry is there's a consolation in that moment that there's really no other way for me to feel. No other way for me to look at my life or my relationships with it other than through this suffering called the blues. Now, I don't know if you can see it yet, But I'm going to take the next 40 minutes to help you understand it. What a weird deal that is. My suffering is consolation so that somehow in feeling sorry for myself, Caught up in the blues, I'm comforted. And part of the comfort of the blues of feeling sorry for myself, And I'll make a little list for you and then you can add to it as we're sitting here. When I'm feeling sorry for myself, It proves to me that the feeling is valid because my mind is saying, And let's look at a couple instances of where we feel sorry for ourselves. How about I didn't get the break that somebody else did. I missed out on an opportunity, You know, Back when I was 20, 30, 40, 50, Whatever it was. How about for the blues? I'm not as attractive as I used to be. If I ever was, I never was attractive. How's that for the blues? Or I'm not popular. People don't like me. Do you remember the early form of the blues? I do. You'd line up on the playground when you were a kid and then there'd be two team captains and they'd pick people from that lineup to be on their team and they'd alternate. And I don't know if you remember this, As you got near the end of the list and you were like the last person, The only person left to choose. That was tough stuff. I feel left out. Isn't that one of the ways of the blues? I can't do what I used to. Another kind of blues. Maybe, Yeah, You don't understand. We could make a list like we do on our Discovery Wednesday night classes, That there's almost an endless list of things that in one way or another can bring up this kind of dark psychological self lashing that we go through and it's constant to us. So if we can all see that while I just listed four or five of these, We all can come up with the common one. I feel stuck in life. I can't get out of where I'm at. What is it, And this is the key question, What is it that lives in us, Within us, That consoles us by suffering over itself? Now, I don't know if you've examined this before we get into a story I'm going to tell you. What are the options in suffering over myself? Suffering over myself tells me why I'm suffering, And then maybe it'll tell me what to do about that suffering, Which always involves a binary set of choices to fight with the suffering, Try to change or control the condition, Or to try to avoid it and to go sink in some mess of sorrow somewhere, Drink, Eat myself into oblivion. What is it that lives within us that consoles itself, That makes itself feel better by suffering over itself? That's what I want to look at. How is that even possible if you're understanding the question? I know it's so familiar to most of us that it never even dawns on us that when we're feeling sorry for ourselves, We're kind of rolling in the dark, Rolling in the deep, As it were, But the deep isn't something beautiful. We're rolling in the deep dread, The deep discouragement, The deep despair. So let me tell you a story to help set the stage for our study. I don't know how many of you join me. I speak three times a week. I often use stories to help make points by bringing characters into play that represent parts of ourselves so that we can see the entire lesson through their dialogue and their interaction. And one of my favorite vehicles for this is a doctor story and the heroine in the story, Her name is Christine, And she's been coming to see the doctor who represents Sophia Wisdom, Real knowledge for a long time. She's an aspirant. She wants to know what's going on. He helps her see things she can't see. So she's come to see the good doctor again. And he says to her, What can I do for you, Christine? She says, I have the blues. You have the blues? He says, Yes. Can you tell me what do you mean by this idea that you have the blues? He says, I don't know. Recently, More and more, I tend to feel sorry for myself. Well, He said, Can you tell me a little more? What do you mean? Sorry for yourself. What do you mean by that? She says it all depends actually on where I am and who I'm with in those moments. Like sometimes I feel the blues because I'm not as smart as other people. I'm not as witty. Other times I'll be in a place, Maybe shopping, And I'll see someone who's much more fashion aware than myself. Or I'm at a gathering of friends, And I'm not the center of attention. Someone else says I'm not popular, Or I'm not as fortunate as others. She says it really runs a gamut of different things. I know one thing, Though, She said for sure. He said, What's that? He said, She said, When all of this is going on, I really feel sorry for myself because I think of all the work that I've done to change myself. And in these moments when I'm full of this self-pity, Feeling sorry for myself, Caught up in this wave of the blues, I haven't changed at all. And that makes me even feel worse, More sorry for myself. What's the point? And she said, And that's the question that comes up all the time at the bottom line of this feeling. What's the point? What's the point? And honest to God, She said, I'm running out of answers. He said, Well, I think I can help you. She said, Do we have to do some tests? He said, No, We don't have to do any tests. I can diagnose this almost instantly. I've seen it before. It's a common condition, He said. What's a common condition? And he said to Christine, You have sorrow. Sorrow. She said, Sorrow. Are you making fun of me? I'm in pain. Of course not, He said. Sorrow is an almost never properly diagnosed as the real cause of unseen self-inflicted sorrow. She said, Well, Get with it. What is sorrow? If you will, Kate. He said, Sorrow is an acronym, And it stands for suffering as a result of unconscious comparison. I'm hoping that Kate will post that. There it is. Sorrow uck. Sorrow uck. Suffering as a result of unconscious comparison. This is the true cause of all the blues that we have, All this self-pity that we run through all the time. He said to her, Listen, Try and see it. Now I'm talking to you through this conversation. When do you start feeling sorry for yourself? When do any of us start feeling sorry for ourselves? Other than when, Without really ever knowing why, It just comes on us. We find ourselves washed away in a strange set of thoughts that weigh in and on our life. And they're in the background considering our worth, What happened to us in our life, What did or didn't, But what we can't see in this moment. And I hope you can at least remember somewhat that state that starts to come over you when this self-pity, When the blue starts to come. He said to her, One eye, Which is also this eye, But our eye in terms of a sense of self, One eye is looking at your life through the lens of some familiar unhappiness. One of these things that we just listed. And at the same time, Another eye, Another part of us is looking at all the reasons why we shouldn't have to feel that way. So that here I am, And I'm busy feeling this pain. And something saying that not only should you feel this way now because of what you're looking at, Meaning where your attention is, But you have the right to feel that pain. I don't know if this strikes you the way that I'm hoping that it will. Something is telling you when you're feeling bad, Sorry, Full of the blues, That you have the right to feel that way. Imagine for a moment, God, The divine, Whatever you call the higher power, Imagine it coming down and poking you, Beating you and saying, You know what? Not only should you feel bad, But you have the right to feel this way. Do you think that love would ever tell you that somehow or other you're correct in being filled with these dark thoughts and feelings? And of course it's ludicrous. And yet that's what's going on. One of us is looking at some familiar, Something is triggered, The feeling of not being worthy, Of not having enough, Of not being as fortunate as others. Something looks in the mirror and sees that we don't look and it triggers. It's looking at this. Oh my God, What's happening to you? And at the same time, Another part of us is not only saying you really should feel that way. I mean, Look at yourself. You have the right to feel this way. And once it gets that hook in your mouth, Convincing you that you have the right to hate yourself, You have the right to corrupt yourself with all of this conflict as all that's going on. What neither of these eyes can see is that if you and I ever really want to know the truth that frees us from these blues, Then we have to begin to see this. The real source of this sadness in whatever form it takes only exists as it does for reasons that we have yet to see and that we're going to spend the next, What, 22 minutes, 23 minutes looking at. Yes, It is odd, Isn't it? Self-inflicted pain to feel better about ourselves. Because in the moment when I'm feeling that self-inflicted pain, It is proving in quotes to me that the reason I'm in pain is because I shouldn't be. You need to see this. Let's keep going. In any moment, And I'm asking you to see it with me, In any moment when it feels like we're being washed away by these blues, It's because in that moment we're identified with what amounts to the conflicted musings of an unconscious mind as it resists some familiar dark sense of itself. So it's resisting the feeling it has of itself, But the feeling it's resisting is because that same mind is comparing the feeling that it's identified with another idea, An image of some kind, How it should feel, How it imagines it ought to be in this moment. So there's this comparison that this mind is involved in that it doesn't know it's in, Where on one hand it's looking at the sense of self, Oh, Look at my life, Look at the way things are, Look how I am, I'm never going to understand what I need to understand, And I've been doing this, Blah, Blah, Blah. And so here it is, And it has brought up an image of itself. The mind has actually brought up an image of itself that as it brings the image up that it does, It resists its own finding. And it resists the finding that it has brought up and that it is giving its attention to, Meaning that it's identifying with. It resists it by comparing what it is looking at with what it thinks it should be seeing. So not only does that mind bring up what it's unhappy about, But it couldn't be unhappy about that unless it was comparing it to a happiness it imagines it should have and it doesn't have in that moment. And that level of self, It can't see what we must learn to see, Is the more it resists the experience it's making for itself. Let me say it again, The more it resists the experience it's making for itself, The more it renders itself blind to the fact that without having first measured itself to some imaginary ideal and then judging itself for coming up short, It wouldn't be caught up in this unwanted experience of sorrow-uck. Sorrow as a result of unconscious comparison. Sorrow as a result of unconscious comparison. There's a big step along the upper path. Most men and women get to that particular ledge where a leap has to be taken and it's not a leap of faith, It's a leap of willingness to see the truth about ourselves. And that is we cannot believe that we are complicit in the experience of any given moment of life that we don't want. We believe that the condition is responsible for the experience and spend our lives trying to change the experience, The condition, And when we can't, Then we get the blues. Instead of understanding, As we are intended to, That we couldn't be feeling sorry for ourselves unless we weren't identified with something that's telling us, Look at this guy, Look at yourself. You're 50, 60, 70, 80 years old. What have you amounted to? What do you have? Who loves you? None of that. All of that in that moment comes flooding in, Doesn't it? And when it comes flooding in, We're sitting there going, No, I don't want to feel this way. I wish I was other than that. And sitting there wishing that you were other than what you are being given to see in that moment is resistance, Is conflict, And you're locked in this binary, Invisible, Strange circle that has no escape in it because it is a creation of an unconscious mind that cannot see what it's doing to itself. Sorrow as a result of unconscious comparison. We don't really know who we are without thought constantly bringing up something, Some analysis of the moment, Some measurement of some relationship. And as that thought brings that up, And we're so used to rolling along with those thoughts and identifying with the sense of self that's connected to it, That we can't see the moment we identify with one sense of self, Particularly an unwanted one, The only reason the unwanted sense of self exists as it does is because the same mind is comparing that which it is attending to to that which it says it ought to be or ought to have. And there is no freedom, No possibility of escaping that paradigm of self-punishing thoughts and feelings born of comparing ourselves, By the way, To our own ideals. Now, I don't know if I've been clear enough, I've got to keep moving along because I have seven insights I want to cover with you to help you understand this. Are we communicating? Are you getting the idea here? Have you ever caught yourself sitting at home with your head down or staring out into space? Have you ever been able to see what it is that has you hypnotized in that moment? We're hypnotized by self-induced suffering that we resist as we induce it. We're hypnotized by self-induced suffering born of comparison that we are captured by as we give ourselves over to it and then derive a very familiar sense of self that isn't who you are at all, But that we have spent our life trying to deal with in order to escape a condition that only exists because this mind cannot see itself and what it's doing to itself when this sorrow is going on, When this sorrow as a result of unconscious comparison is taking place. I was just thinking for a moment, We all have health issues. I've been having some. I've actually had a lot. My life, I've been rolled over, Beat up and put away a bunch of times. Isn't it strange how we want to feel sorry for ourselves when something that isn't part of our habit, Part of our physical routine suddenly goes south where maybe you may not be at the stage yet where maybe you used to be able to open any bottle top on any bottle. People would say, I can't open this and you could open it or maybe not. It's just something like that. Now you find yourself struggling to get the cap off the milk. Just little things like that and suddenly this comparison comes in. Well, It was never like that before. Now it is, Oh, What's going to happen to me? And the minute that you're caught up in this sorrow as a result of unconscious comparison, Then the same mind begins to try to figure out a new image to be identified with so that it can escape the condition that it itself created. So if you're following and I see that you are, The key to dismissing the parts of us that love to attend, And you've heard this expression, A pity party, Is that we have to learn to blow out the match that lights the candle of sorrow before it becomes inflamed. It's possible in the midst of this, Even with all the candles lit up, It's possible to still blow them out. It's a little more difficult. It's much better to be ahead of the game. And I know because I, I know you fairly well, I can hear the thoughts. I'd like to be able to do that. And I keep trying like Christine, But Christine came to the good doctor and part of her self-pity, Part of her feeling bad was that all these years she's been struggling to do it, And she still can't. So you, You as an aspirant, You have to make a certain set of decisions for yourself. And I'm going to help you do that by contrasting what we are and do now to the possibilities we have, If we can remember to do so. So I'm going to share with you a seven blues breaking insights, But it's up to you to welcome the healing inherent in these, In these illuminations in order to see the truth that's hidden in them. Because if you don't, Then we're dead in the, Dead in the water, Excuse me. So let's get started here. Kate, Let's bring up the first of the seven blue blues breaking insights. Read along with me. There is never a good reason to go along with feeling bad about yourself. We should cover that at the start. Didn't we? Somebody tell me one redeeming character, One quality that's good for you about feeling bad about yourself. The minute that you identify with these negative states in the same moment that that's taking place, You are agreeing to put on your back, Whatever that sorrow is pointing to as being the source of your suffering. And now your attention goes to the outer world, To the conditions you blame for that unrequited sense of yourself. And now you're struggling to change the world when all you have to do is at least in the beginning, Understand, You know, I'm starting to feel the blues. I'm starting to feel bad, But I know enough now let's bring up insight. Number two, I know enough now to realize, Cause I've been working as best I can. The only thing feeling sorry for myself changes about my The only thing feeling sorry for myself changes about my life is it makes it worse. I'm asking you to see what have you profited out of feeling sorry for yourself? Has it changed anything? It doesn't change anything. You know what it changes? It changes your relationship with everybody you know, Because nobody wants to be around a sad sack. You don't even want to be around yourself. And then you want to go find people to talk to, To get them to, To console your sorrow. Don't you console psychological sorrow and other human beings, Even when they come to you and you're so used to enabling them this unseen codependent relationship called sorrow Why? Number three, Insight. Kate, Let's bring it up, Please. No matter how you look at it, You involve yourself with whatever you resist. Do we not resist this self-pity? Isn't that what self-pity is? Is resisting our life because it's not how it meant to be? Please try to understand this. Resistance is an unseen form of attention. When we resist something, It feels like we don't want it. I'm telling you that the minute that you resist feeling sorry for yourself, You are identifying with that feeling. And the minute you identify with that feeling, You're wrapped up in the unconscious mechanics of that mind. And then you're washed away in all of the considerations that follow what you're going through in that moment. Insight number four, We're talking about how it is that we break these blues, These ideas, These insights that if we can just grab hold of one and let it live with us, Let its light, Even in knowledge form, Be there in the unwanted moment, We will buy that assertion of that new understanding, Drive a certain kind of wedge between the old blues and the truths that help us see them as they are and gain a new vantage point. Insight number four, Being wrapped up in self-pity completely spoils any chance of being able to see a new possibility as it appears. Being wrapped up in self-pity completely spoils any chance of being able to see new possibilities as they appear. You and I know this. When I'm full of self-pity, When I'm feeling bad about myself, Sorry, Sorry, Sorry, I don't see anything other than what I don't want to be and why I have to feel that way and maybe what I need to do to change it. But if you're following me, Anything you do to change the condition that you blame for your sorrow is strengthening the illusion that the condition is responsible for the self-pity. It's not. If I'm showing you anything that sorrow, That the whole notion of that relationship that we have with this unseen self-comparison is at the root of this suffering. New possibilities are, Life is a new possibility. Can you be reborn? Meaning, Can you have a new wave of understanding come in and change the whole dynamic of the darkness in this consciousness and integrate it? Or is the very fact that I'm so locked down in this dark state keeping me from any form of recognizing that possibility? And we know the truth of it. Let's go to Blues Breaking Insight number five. Feeling sorry for yourself is a slow-acting poison. First it corrupts, Then it consumes your heart, Choking it with dark, Useless emotions. Feeling sorry for yourself is a slow-acting poison. I hope you've come far enough along the way for you to, At least in retrospect, See that when you start to feel sorry for yourself, It seems to us that the world is draping us in these heavy, Dark curtains. And the heavier the curtains get, We fail to see that the weight of that darkness is inseparable from our resistance to our own conclusion. So here I am and I'm getting darker, Things are getting heavier, Darker, Heavier, And the heavier the darker they get, The more I feel sorry for myself. The more I feel sorry for myself, The more the depression seeps in. The more the depression seeps in, The more certainty I have that there's no other way for me to meet this moment other than through this consolation of feelings. I shouldn't have to be like this. Why is life like that? And then this strange form of love, Of a self-dialogue that seems to be self-love, When nothing could be further from the truth of it. It is the old nature in enabling itself by talking to itself and finding from the content of itself everything it needs to validate. This sense of being the victim that it wants to drag you into so it can use your life in the futile attempt to escape its own trap. Blues Breaking Insight number six. See this with me. The only thing that grows from cultivating any dark seed of sorrow is more bitter fruit. The only thing that grows from cultivating any dark seed of sorrow is more bitter fruit. It's sort of the opposite. Christ said, I am the vine, You are the branches, Referring to the divine as the true vine, Himself as the extension, And you and I as part of that light and that life. There is a dark vine, Isn't there? A very dark vine. Something that runs all the way through us presently, Basically unchecked, If not being constantly cultivated by unconsciousness. And that dark vine, It grows from itself and grows from itself more and more reasons why it feels the way it does. And every time it comes up with the next action, The next plan, The next distraction, The next thing you're going to do to get over this feeling of being inadequate or whatever it is, Feeling incomplete. Every action we take from that unconscious mind divided as it is, Is the seed of the next sorrow. Because what do we console ourselves with other than the next condition that we're going to enter into or that we're going to escape? And so the identification deepens and deepens and deepens. And with it, The dark hold of this nature that somehow or other we believe really is interested in saving itself. It's not interested in saving itself. It's interested in suffering itself because that's the only sense of self it knows, And it needs you to be complicit with it. The last of the seven blues breaking insights, Please. Nice deep breath. There lives nothing real in our past. There lives nothing real in our past, Regardless of how disappointing or painful it may have been that can hold us down, Let alone make us a captive, Any more than some dark shadow can keep you from walking into the sunlight. You can't feel sorry for yourself without remembering why. See it. It is impossible for you to feel sorry for yourself without something helping you remember why you need to. Yeah, Get thee behind me. Yeah. I just love it. How many of you want a friend that goes with you everywhere you go that reminds you why you're not whatever it is that you have imagined yourself to be? You cannot feel sorry for yourself without something reminding you why. You want to live with something that's forever reminding you why you feel the way you do feel bad the way you do? Well, I'm telling you that you have a choice. I'm saying that you can see in that moment. Here I am. I feel the flood. I feel that I feel the dark. I feel the dark arms of something starting to embrace me. I feel life closing in on me, My everything shutting down. I feel that. And in that moment, Instead of just agreeing to get into that dark sled that slides down into God only knows where you step back, You get out, But not by resisting it by but observing, Recognizing, Oh, I know this. I know this. And I can see my mind. It's looking at something that as it looks at what happened or didn't happen, It is deriving a very familiar sense of myself from what it's looking at that terrible man who said those things to me. He said, I wasn't this or I couldn't that. And even though I fought with him, I was poor. I could feel it. And now my mind's looking at as it looks at that. It says, No, I don't want to be that. And then the next thing I know, The comparison is rampant and I'm caught again. Nothing can keep you in the blues because there is another kind of light that you are created to not just call upon you. It is your life. You live within it. It lives within you, But it presently is ignored. It's shut out by the strange preference of the consolation that we find whenever this pain reaches a certain point. And then we just commit ourselves to this unconscious suffering. Remember, Take one of these seven insights. There are actually eight. The last one I gave you was that you can't feel sorry for yourself without remembering why. So that instead of going along with the memory, Look at what it is in that consciousness that's bringing it up and say, Do I want that as a friend? I don't want that as a friend. And if you start to recognize any of this, You will have to part ways. That's the beauty of real intelligence. There is action inherent in awareness. Awareness allows us to recognize the players in the field and awareness helps us realize that the order of these characters and how they all of that is inherent in being awake. And when that happens, If you just remember, How about just remember it? Wait a minute. The only thing feeling sorry for myself changes is that it makes my life worse. What if I just remember that? Or what if I remember that these blues, They're a slow acting poison? What if I just take one thing? Don't make a big deal out of it. Because right now you see all our mind remembers is what it requires in order to continue running around in this circle of self sorrow. That's all it needs. It doesn't know anything else. That's why the true teachings, The true truth teachings are invaluable because when you hear the truth, You remember it. When you remember it, You're corresponding to a part of yourself that is literally timeless, Divine in nature. And I must enter into that new nature when this old one comes calling for me. And I enter into it by bringing that old nature into the light of this new awareness where I realize, You know what, When I'm full of self pity, I have no other possibility except to follow the road it provides. I don't want to walk that road. You can go through this and you must yourself. I can't do it for you. I won't. But you can use the very moment now that's filled with the misery, The blues, The self pity. You can use every last one of those moments to prove to yourself that not only is that sense of self false, But that you, As you truly are, Recognize it as being a kind of temptation and that you're no longer going to follow where it leads because now you're going to let the light reveal to you the true path. And the true path is up out of those shadows, Out of that old nature and into an entirely new relationship with life where rebirth in the true sense of the word is part of your day to day experience as opposed to reincarnating this old nature that lives to ensure that it continues at the cost of your possibilities. So I got a few minutes. We can look at some comments. We can take some questions. I would just tell you one thing as briefly as I can. If you go to, What is it called? My, Someone told me, Oh, Go to the search box on Insight Timer. Go to my profile. That's it, On Insight Timer. There are other talks that correlate to these ideas. There's one called Drop the Dead Weight of the Past. There's one called How to Get Past Any Past Pain. There's several talks on this topic. You can search it out if this is of interest to you. There's if this is of interest to you. There's a series of talks. Go to my profile. I think you can search that way. And then you can enhance your study, Enlarge it, Deepen it, Gain more insight. Critical. Okay. Yes, We have our work cut out for us. What was sorrow? I think sorrow. Yes. Sorrow as a result of unconscious comparison. Sorrow as a result of unconscious comparison. If I really see that sorrow is the result of unconscious comparison, Who but me can bring myself out of that unseen comparison? Who but me can bring myself out of that unseen comparison process? I don't need you. I don't need a guru. I don't need anything other than the awareness, This divine light that lets me see where it is that I am in an unconscious compromised relationship with a mind I have no idea does and acts as it does. That's why awareness is so important and the ability to attend in that moment. Because you may, God willing, You'll have this moment. You know what? I'm starting to feel sorry for myself. What was it? I know it's poison. It's poison. I don't want that. And the next thing you know, Some associated thought will jump in there. It'll bring up something else. Your attention will go there. And that's the way it works. That's how we work. We gain insight through action. Not insight through knowledge, But insight through experience. And that's what you need to do. You need to see the experience of this unconscious nature giving you the experience it's used to giving you and that you're used to accepting. And you don't have to accept it once you understand it. You're not resisting it when you don't accept it. You're not accepting it any more than you would pick up a glass of muddy water and drink from it. It's just not smart. There's no wisdom in it. Awareness is the light. Am I breathing or am I? Magi says, Am I breathing or am I being breathed? Magi, Everybody, I want you to be aware of how your mind will find consolation in ideas that maybe when you first heard them or saw them or read them, Brought in a certain kind of insight. And there was a certain beauty in the sudden awareness that embraces all of these possibilities. But I've said this before and I'll say it again to close this talk. Don't console yourself. Sweet God, Stop consoling yourself. You will never know the true mercy of the divine, The true intelligence, The true compassion, The true wisdom that is already within you, The light that will reveal it and bring you into a relationship with it if you console yourself. I just see the flip side of consoling ourselves through suffering is finding something to feel good about ourselves when we're suffering. No consolation of oneself. You stay with that understanding. And by God, I promise you, You will begin to see that the self that seeks consolation is creating the conflict that drives it to look for it. You see that and you're done. It begins to end. And that's what must happen. You must end your present relationship with the self-punishing nature, Not by hating it or denying it, But by seeing where you've been complicit with its activity. The end of your complicity is the end of your sorrow.
