## Highlights - To avoid this burden and be able to fully embrace life, wise ones throughout the ages have taught the importance of accepting reality. Only by accepting reality can we work with the flow of life as it passes by and create a better world. ([Location 87](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09LLTRR3Z&location=87)) - Acceptance is best understood as nonresistance to reality. Try as you may, no one can make an event that has already happened not have happened. Your only choice is to accept the event or resist it. ([Location 93](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09LLTRR3Z&location=93)) - People do all kinds of things trying to make it nice in there. Some run around trying to have exciting experiences, find fulfilling relationships, or even take the edge off with drinking or drugs—all for the same reason. The problem is they’re approaching the issue in the wrong way. They’re asking how to make it nice in there, while the more relevant question is why is it not nice? If you find out why it’s not nice, and you get rid of that, you’re going to find out it can be really nice in there. Life doesn’t have to be a game of, “Since it’s not nice in here, I need to find things that will compensate for that in order to feel a little bit better.” That is what everybody’s doing. They are trying to find people, places, and things in the outside world that will unfold in a way that makes it more comfortable inside. People are trying to use the outside to fix the inside—better to find out why it’s not nice inside to begin with. ([Location 204](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09LLTRR3Z&location=204)) - That’s why you wanted a certain toy; you thought it would make you okay. That’s why you wanted to marry this special person. That’s why you wanted to go to Europe or Hawaii for a vacation. You get to the point where you realize all you’re ever doing in there is trying to be okay. First you think about what will make you okay, then you go out and try to make it happen. ([Location 248](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09LLTRR3Z&location=248)) - The Kingdom is within you. You in there are a very great being made in the image of God, but to know that, you have to free yourself from all the inner commotion. ([Location 261](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09LLTRR3Z&location=261)) - That is what all spirituality is about. When you are no longer distracted by any of the three great distractors, your consciousness will no longer be pulled into those objects. The focus of consciousness will very naturally remain in the source of consciousness. It’s like a flashlight shining on various objects. Instead of looking at the objects being illumined, if you look at the light itself, you will realize it is the same light shining on all the different objects. ([Location 274](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09LLTRR3Z&location=274)) - All moments in the universe are simply moments in the universe; you are the one bringing your personal preferences into these impersonal moments and making them seem personal. ([Location 320](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09LLTRR3Z&location=320)) - One of the most amazing things you will ever realize is that the moment in front of you is not bothering you—you are bothering yourself about the moment in front of you. ([Location 332](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09LLTRR3Z&location=332)) - You are being given a unique show that took billions of years to create—it’s right in front of you, and you’re complaining about it. We all think we have very good reasons to complain. The intention of this journey we are on together is to take away those reasons, whatever they are. ([Location 541](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09LLTRR3Z&location=541)) - You live in a world where a seed falls on the ground, and it has a built-in chemist that knows how to break down the molecules of dirt and water, mix them with sunlight, and combine those substances into a cornstalk or a tree. You’re taught that this “intelligent chemist” is the complex DNA molecule. Where did this amazing molecular structure come from? All its elements were forged in the stars and then naturally got pulled together into the DNA structure by the four fundamental forces (gravity, electromagnetism, and the strong and weak nuclear forces). Human intelligence had nothing to do with the creation of DNA, yet DNA is responsible for all the plant and animal life on Earth. We live in a world that is so perfect it should constantly blow our minds. But we are so lost in making it all personal that we miss both the greatness of science and the greatness of God. ([Location 555](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09LLTRR3Z&location=555)) - This is spirituality—coming into harmony with reality, instead of your personal self. ([Location 575](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09LLTRR3Z&location=575)) - You can think of mind as a very high-vibration field of energy in which thoughts can be created. Mind is not the thoughts. Mind is the field of energy in which thoughts are capable of existing. ([Location 605](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09LLTRR3Z&location=605)) - In the dream state, images are being created in the mind, and you are looking at them. The waking state is the same, except that the mental images are being generated by the senses instead of by the mind itself. ([Location 635](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09LLTRR3Z&location=635)) - When consciousness is simply experiencing reality as imaged in the mind, that is what we call being in the present moment. At this point in our discussion, there is nowhere else to be. The real world is outside, it is being reflected in your mind, and you are aware of the image right in front of you. In this very simple state, you are experiencing what you were meant to experience: the gift of the moment that’s being given to you. ([Location 652](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09LLTRR3Z&location=652)) - That is what The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali describes as the experiencer and the experience becoming one. You have allowed a merger between subject and object. There’s nothing distracting your consciousness from what is happening right in front of you. This is the yogic state of dharana—one-pointed concentration. ([Location 663](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09LLTRR3Z&location=663)) - When you focus consciousness on a particular mental form, you impede that form’s ability to pass through the mind. The very act of concentrating on it makes it stay in your mind. You know this. When you want to do math in your mind, you concentrate on the numbers so they stay long enough for you to manipulate them. In fact, anytime you want to hold something in your mind, you must focus your consciousness on it so it does not just fade away. Concentration of consciousness freezes forms in the mind so that they don’t just pass through. ([Location 714](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09LLTRR3Z&location=714)) - Your psyche is like a computer program running in your mind based on your samskaras. ([Location 862](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09LLTRR3Z&location=862)) - All your preferences exist because you stored experiences from the past inside your personal mind. This makes it difficult to live in there, but instead of fixing it, you double down and try to satisfy your preferences. “I want to feel good, and the way to feel good is by getting the house I want.” “The way to feel good is by owning the car I’ve always wanted.” “The way to feel good is by finding a better relationship—this one’s not doing it for me.” These attempts to compensate for your blockages are, at best, short lived because you are not actually getting rid of the blockages. The foundational choice we have in life is either constantly control life to compensate for our blockages or devote our lives to getting rid of our blockages. ([Location 1034](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09LLTRR3Z&location=1034)) - That is why you tend to have so much trouble making decisions. You’re trying to figure out how each choice will make you feel later. “Where do I want to live? Should I change jobs? I need to figure this out.” You’re trying to mentally conceptualize how the proposed action will match the patterns you’ve stored inside. You don’t even think twice about it. “Of course that’s what I’m doing. What else would I do?” How about live in reality and enjoy the moments that are unfolding in front of you? That’s what else you can do. Use your mind to be creative, inspiring, and do great things. Don’t let the mind always be thinking about itself and what it wants. Learn to enjoy life as it is—instead of limiting the ways you can enjoy it to serve your past impressions. ([Location 1046](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09LLTRR3Z&location=1046)) - The self-centered, analyzing layer of mind is the worst. It is the model you build about how everything and everybody needs to be for you to feel okay, including the weather tomorrow. “It better not rain tomorrow, I’m going camping.” Now you’re getting upset about the weather! You have no control over the weather, yet it’s bothering you. It’s not just the weather. The driver in front of you is going ten miles per hour below the speed limit. Let’s watch your mind: “This is ridiculous. I don’t have time for this. What’s wrong with them? They’re supposed to be in the slow lane.” Turns out the problem is not how the person in front of you is driving. The problem is what your mind is doing about how the person in front of you is driving. Eventually you catch on that you’ve developed an entire intellectual model of how every single thing needs to be: how people should behave, how your spouse should be dressed when you’re going out, even how much traffic there should be. How many things do you do this about? Pretty much every single thing. You honestly believe that what you made up is how it should be. The ([Location 1052](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09LLTRR3Z&location=1052)) - Here’s a technique for getting perspective. Put your mind in outer space and realize that there’s nothing out there but 99.999 percent emptiness. There’s just empty space between all the stars. Your nearest star after the Sun is 4.2 light-years away. To get an idea of how far that is, imagine holding a light beam above the Earth. Now, let it go for one second. In that one second the light circumnavigated the globe seven and a half times. Travel at that speed every second for 4.2 years, and you’ll reach the next star. There’s pretty much nothing but empty space in between. We call it interstellar space. That’s how it is between all the stars, all over the universe. How would you like to be out there and see nothing? Because that’s what 99.999 percent of the universe is. What you get every day is a miracle! There are colors, shapes, and sounds along with all the amazing experiences you’re given with each passing moment. Yet all you do is say, “No, it’s not what I want.” Of course it’s not what you want. That’s not the point. Instead of comparing the moment in front of you against the preferences you’ve built up inside your mind, why don’t you compare it against nothing? Since that’s what makes up 99.999 percent of the universe. ([Location 1069](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09LLTRR3Z&location=1069)) - Suffering is caused by the contrast between what you mentally decided you wanted and the reality unfolding in front of you. ([Location 1088](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09LLTRR3Z&location=1088)) - Just as your body is always trying to expel impurities, so your mind is trying to get these mental impurities out. That is what’s happening when your mind creates its own thoughts. Sometimes you will be able to trace those thoughts back to their source; other times it’s not so easy. The important thing to realize is there’s always a reason why your mind creates one thought versus another. ([Location 1136](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09LLTRR3Z&location=1136)) - Let’s go back to the example of someone being late with a phone call. Your mind could begin creating worrisome thoughts about what you might have done to upset them so much that they aren’t calling. But that is not the meaningful question. The meaningful question is, why did that possible reason come up versus any other? Turns out, when you were ten years old, somebody once said, “You’re right, I didn’t call you. It was on purpose because I didn’t like what you did.” Now years later, when somebody doesn’t call, that comes back up. What if years ago when a person didn’t call, the reason was they wanted to surprise you by personally coming by with a special gift. Now when someone doesn’t call, you feel all excited about what might happen next. ([Location 1139](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09LLTRR3Z&location=1139)) - The traditional Freudian concept of dreams is that some events happening outside leave unfinished impressions in the mind. A little boy wants a bicycle but doesn’t get one. He goes to sleep and dreams he’s got a bicycle. The original bicycle event didn’t sit well, so the boy pushed it away in his mind. He suppressed it. When he went to sleep and was not controlling his thoughts as much, the mind was free to release what it had not been free to express while the boy was awake. ([Location 1150](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09LLTRR3Z&location=1150)) - Freud called the dream we’ve been discussing basic wish fulfillment. It is a samskara formed in the waking mind releasing energy by creating the thoughts you watch while you’re asleep. ([Location 1155](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09LLTRR3Z&location=1155)) - Once you stop suppressing uncomfortable experiences, one thing you’re going to realize is that there really is no subconscious mind, per se. The conscious mind and the subconscious mind are actually the same one mind, and the only reason we see a difference is because we artificially created a division. ([Location 1162](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09LLTRR3Z&location=1162)) - Fortunately, these artificially divided parts of your mind will merge once you stop suppressing. ([Location 1169](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09LLTRR3Z&location=1169)) - The combination of your thoughts and emotions makes up what can be called your psyche, or your personal self. The psyche is completely distinct from your physical body. The psyche is the nonphysical world going on inside you. ([Location 1239](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09LLTRR3Z&location=1239)) - The samskaras you stored are trying to release their energy from the heart, and that is causing the mind to get active. The roots of the samskaras are stored in your heart. That is where the patterns you shoved out of your mind went. They did not dissipate. They went down further into the source of your energy flow, which is in your heart. ([Location 1287](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09LLTRR3Z&location=1287)) - This is because what’s actually happening when you begin to feel love is your heart is opening and emanating a beautiful flow of energy. This should drive you to say, “I love love,” but instead you say, “I love you.” That is your first clue into the role of another person in your experience of love. As long as the other person’s presence helps your heart open, you feel love for them. If their presence stops opening your heart, you start looking elsewhere. This is why human relationships are so difficult. We project the source of love outside, instead of realizing it is always inside. The actual flow of love has to do with you and your heart. It has nothing to do with anybody else. It is an energy flow coming through your heart that you experience inside. ([Location 1307](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09LLTRR3Z&location=1307)) - the time, but most people are so lost in the first three they don’t focus on this fourth object of consciousness. Nevertheless, there is a very powerful energy flow inside of you. In different cultures it has been called by different names, such as shakti, chi, or spirit. For the purposes of our discussion, we will use the traditional yogic term shakti. Once you quiet down enough, you will realize this energy is constantly flowing inside of you. ([Location 1354](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09LLTRR3Z&location=1354)) - Your inner state becomes dominated by the unfinished energy patterns stored inside, and you become totally lost in them. In this state, you are not in charge of your thoughts or emotions. Nor are you in charge of the opening or closing of your heart. The activated samskara has taken over your life. If you’re not careful, it will determine your future by the choices you make in that unclear state. ([Location 1371](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09LLTRR3Z&location=1371)) - Here’s an example of what the mind sounds like when a samskara has been hit: “I can’t believe he said that. My father used to say stuff like that to me, and I hated it. That’s why I left home so young. No way I’m going through that again. I don’t need to be in a relationship with someone who reminds me of my father.” As logical as that may sound—it’s not. This person you are interacting with is not your father, and if you didn’t have those samskaras left from your relationship with your father, you would probably be handling your current relationship much better. In the truest sense, what was said didn’t bother you—it hit the samskara, and the activated samskara bothered you. Regardless, to protect yourself from the disturbance, you closed your heart. Your samskaras are what cause your heart to open and close. ([Location 1374](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09LLTRR3Z&location=1374)) - Letting this opening and closing of your heart run your life is certainly not spiritual. You’re not being true to yourself—you’re being true to your blockages. That’s all your psyche is. Your psyche is the net result of all your blockages and how the energy manages to flow through them. ([Location 1419](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09LLTRR3Z&location=1419)) - Understanding the effects of these blockages helps explain why it’s so difficult to make personal decisions. What you’re trying to see is how one choice or the other will make you feel. “Should I marry this person, or should I wait until I establish my career?” You’re using these thoughts to see how the different choices will shift the flow of your energy through your blockages. The problem is you have so many conflicting blockages stored in there that what to do is not clear. Of course it’s not clear; you’re consulting your inner mess and expecting a clear response. All the while, you are noticing that these thoughts and emotions keep shifting inside. The important question is not what to do about this, it is: Who is noticing all this? The same consciousness is aware of this entire process going on inside. There may be many samskaras in there, but there are not many of you in there. There is only one consciousness watching all these competing patterns and identifying with them. ([Location 1432](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09LLTRR3Z&location=1432)) - When you become one integrated seer—the single witness watching all these different things pass by inside—you are centered. You are clear. You are free. But when you don’t sit in the seat of the witness, and your sense of being is split amongst all these diverse inner patterns, things become very confusing. ([Location 1439](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09LLTRR3Z&location=1439)) - People in this state struggle to find themselves. They feel they must choose which of these personalities is really them. The answer is quite clear: none of them are you. Please don’t pick one of them and let that choice determine your life. None of your thoughts are more you than any other thought. You are the one who is experiencing the thoughts. There’s not a single thing about those shifting energy patterns that is you. ([Location 1446](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09LLTRR3Z&location=1446)) - An emotion is caused by the shakti hitting the blockages in your heart and shooting out to release the blocked energies. This creates enough disturbance to your normal flow that your attention gets drawn to these disturbed energies. Emotions are a release of blocked energy. ([Location 1462](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09LLTRR3Z&location=1462)) - From a yogic point of view, here’s what happens on a daily basis in our lives. The energy flow comes up, and as it approaches the heart it can do one of three things. First, if the energy is totally blocked by the samskaras while trying to go into the heart, you won’t feel your heart. A lot of people don’t feel their heart very much. They are so used to focusing on their mind that they don’t notice the shifts in the heart until those shifts are too strong to ignore. Emotions are messy and much too sensitive, so people suppress them. They want to be analytical, not emotional. No one told these people that if they bothered to do the work necessary to clean out the heart, the increased energy flow coming into the mind would result in more inspiration, more creativity, and more intuitive brilliance. A second thing can happen with energy coming into the heart. It can make it in and begin hitting the blockages stored there. This tends to make you moody and more sensitive to what is going on around you. Every once in a while, however, things will line up just right, and your heart will get quiet. Somebody is in front of you and somehow the way they look, the way they talk, or something else about them stimulates and rearranges your samskaras just right. “Her hair looks like my sister’s hair, and I really got along with my sister. Look at those glasses. They’re just like the ones my favorite actress wore in my favorite movie of all time. This is definitely my kind of person.” The next thing you know, you’re saying out loud, “People told me nice things about you, and I was really excited to meet you. Now that I see you, it’s way beyond anything I expected.” So it begins—love at first sight. The words are right, the hair is right, the glasses are right. Everything is opening you. You don’t have to do anything—it’s all happening by itself. The stimuli coming in through your senses are rearranging the samskaras just right to create an opening for the energy to come up. As the energy comes up into the heart, it has the opportunity to flow out and connect with what caused it to open. ([Location 1474](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09LLTRR3Z&location=1474)) - Now we’re talking about a very personal and sensitive subject. Have you ever felt the energy start to flow out of your heart? Have you ever felt your heart connect with another person? It’s as if there were an energy flow tying two hearts together. People who are in love can just sit together not even talking while that beautiful, connected flow is happening. It’s almost as if nothing in this world is as beautiful as that sensation of energy pouring out through the heart and connecting with someone. From a yogic point of view, what you are experiencing is shakti pouring out of the fourth energy center, the heart chakra, of your energy system. Though this heart center is really beautiful, it is actually not so high, since there are seven such chakras that control your inner energy flow. The yogi understands that if all the energy goes out through the heart center it will not have the power to reach the higher centers. ([Location 1489](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09LLTRR3Z&location=1489)) - This leads us to the third thing that can happen when the energy rises up toward the heart—it can make it all the way through. At this point in our journey, all you have to understand is if the energy makes it past the fourth center, there are energy experiences way higher than human love. This doesn’t mean you don’t experience connection with people and things. You actually connect at a much deeper level. People who say the human connection experience is the meaning of life have not experienced the higher centers. That’s like saying food is the meaning of life or intimacy is the meaning of life. Yes, these are beautiful experiences, but they are conditional, and they can come and go. The meaning of life is much deeper than that. ([Location 1504](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09LLTRR3Z&location=1504)) - Another very important thing to understand about the outward flow of energy through the heart is that it literally makes a connection with the other person. This connection is real, and you become attached as the energy is exchanged between you. This is not a physical attachment to one another; this is a reliance on the energy flowing between your hearts that is feeding you both energetically. Let’s look at this in detail. Your heart was closed because stored patterns from your past were blocking the energy flow. Someone shows up whose qualities and characteristics hit you just right so the energy finds a path around one of your major blockages. The blockage is not gone, but a pathway has opened up allowing the energy to flow out through the heart. That energy goes out toward the other person, and the other person’s energy goes out toward you. With the help of another person, you have managed to experience what you would be experiencing if the original blockage was not there. Perhaps you used to think people didn’t like you and that you were not very attractive. Someone shows up who always admires you and looks at you with tremendous love. It makes you feel so comfortable that you melt in their gaze. It’s unbelievable. You don’t feel that weirdness you used to feel all the time. Though this is really beautiful, unfortunately the samskara that was blocking your energy flow is still there. The energy found a way around it, but only as long as the energy exchange with this person is still working. It’s like putting a jumper in an electrical circuit. You bypassed the samskara, but now you are very attached to and dependent on that person. If they start to leave you, or if you even think about losing them, you will feel that original samskara again in all its glory. You will feel the underlying fear and weirdness you used to feel, and it may even be stronger than before. In other words, you’ve tied your energy flow to somebody else, and the state of your heart is now dependent upon their behavior. Surely you have noticed this pattern numerous times in your life. This is called human love. It is very beautiful, but fortunately, there is a much higher form of love that is unconditional and can last forever. ([Location 1531](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09LLTRR3Z&location=1531)) - Let’s say you feel lonely because you don’t have someone special in your life. This sounds perfectly normal, but the truth is having someone special in your life is your attempt to solve your loneliness. It does not address the cause of it. It’s just like if you eat poorly and have a stomachache; you may start looking for the Pepto Bismol. If someone then asks you why you have a stomachache, please don’t say it’s because you can’t find the Pepto Bismol. Finding the Pepto Bismol is an attempt to compensate for your stomachache—it is not related to the cause of it. The Pepto Bismol may make you feel better temporarily, but unless you change your eating habits, the stomachache will return. You will find this is true for many things you do to compensate for your discomforts. ([Location 1613](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09LLTRR3Z&location=1613)) - If you are letting the avoidance of your inner problems define what you’re doing, all you’re doing is expressing your inner problems outside. ([Location 1633](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09LLTRR3Z&location=1633)) - The same thing holds true for the new job, the million dollars in the bank, and the respect of other people. Fine, you can have it all. But what if it creates so much stress and worry that you’re miserable? You’d wish you could have your old job back. You didn’t really want the job, the money, or the acceptance—you wanted what you thought they would give you. You wanted happiness, joy, and a sense of total well-being. How about a constant inner state of love, beauty, and inspiration at the highest level you’ve ever experienced? Why didn’t you ask for that? ([Location 1651](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09LLTRR3Z&location=1651)) - The interesting result of our experiment is that it has led us away from worldliness and into the essence of spirituality. Not that worldliness is a negative term—it just means you think the answer is in the world. You think the answer lies in what’s unfolding in front of you. It isn’t wrong to go to the world for what you think you want—it simply doesn’t work. You’re trying to find something outside that matches your “samskara of the day.” Once you get what you want, or avoid what you don’t want, that will no longer be your major desire or greatest fear. Once that one’s out of the way, there will always be the next issue coming to the surface. ([Location 1663](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09LLTRR3Z&location=1663)) - You only have two choices: either you devote your life to getting the world to match your samskaras, or you devote your life to letting go of your samskaras. ([Location 1686](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09LLTRR3Z&location=1686)) - The purification of your heart begins with being grateful that you have one. ([Location 1700](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09LLTRR3Z&location=1700)) - When something happens in your life, the orchestra of your heart begins to play. It adds richness to your life by playing high notes and low notes that are generally appropriate to the events unfolding before you. ([Location 1701](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09LLTRR3Z&location=1701)) - As you expand and grow spiritually, your range of comfort with the outside world will become wider and wider, allowing you to handle more of the moments passing before you. The same is true with your heart. As you grow spiritually, through honoring your day-to-day experiences, you will learn to become more comfortable with your heart. As a child, the first time you experienced fear or jealousy you might have been overwhelmed and had difficulty holding yourself together. Over time, you became more accustomed to these emotions and at least tried to deal with them. Perhaps the best you could do at first was control your emotions and put on the outward appearance of being okay. Though that’s not necessarily so healthy, it is better than losing yourself completely and letting emotions overcome you. ([Location 1713](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09LLTRR3Z&location=1713)) - Little by little, as you learn to accept that emotions are a reality of life, they will come and go if you let them. This is spiritual evolution. Just as our bodies have evolved through eons of challenging outer experiences, so our souls evolve through the fires of inner experiences. It is not that a great being does not have emotions; it is that they are at peace with their emotions. They can handle the various changes their heart goes through. ([Location 1720](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09LLTRR3Z&location=1720)) - Let’s say someone does something that makes you feel fear. There are times when fear is a normal, healthy reaction to outer events. But you aren’t able to handle the emotion, so you suppress it to get it out of your consciousness. Later, you hear something bad happened to that person. Instead of feeling compassion, you feel relieved. Your emotions are no longer in harmony with outer situations, instead they are releasing the blocked energies from your past experiences. ([Location 1733](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09LLTRR3Z&location=1733)) - Every experience makes you a greater person if you don’t resist it. ([Location 1740](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09LLTRR3Z&location=1740)) - Though it is true that you don’t want to suppress emotions, you also don’t want them running your life. There is a sacred place between suppression and expression—pure experience. In this state, you are neither suppressing the energy internally nor expressing it externally. You are simply willing to experience the energy coming from your heart and mind. ([Location 1760](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09LLTRR3Z&location=1760)) - A wise person doesn’t renounce the world; they honor the reality that’s unfolding in front of them. Likewise, a wise person doesn’t renounce the use of their mind; they just don’t listen to the personal mind because it’s lost in thoughts about itself. The personal mind is not going to solve your problems. It’s doing the best it can with the limited data it has, but its efforts don’t generally work out so well. ([Location 1792](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09LLTRR3Z&location=1792)) - Regarding the heart, a wise person allows the heart to freely express itself inwardly but does not get lost in it. Some people say, “Follow your heart.” They must not be referring to the personal heart because it’s all over the place on a day-to-day basis. Fortunately, there is a higher heart to follow. Once energy flows past the middle of the fourth chakra, it enters a deeper heart that doesn’t change, ever. There’s a constant upward flow of beautiful energy. It brings waves of bliss so powerful you can hardly focus outwardly. It wafts over you, and you settle back into this beautiful peace that surpasses all understanding. The peace you have because you got what you wanted—that’s understandable. This peace comes over you and stays for no reason, completely unconditionally—that’s what your higher heart has to offer you. This is the gift of your spiritual heart. ([Location 1795](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09LLTRR3Z&location=1795)) - To experience your spiritual heart, you must learn to rise above your personal heart. The personal heart is very strong and very emotional. It’s not easy to pierce through the personal heart, but it is possible. First, check to see if your heart’s expressions are based on current reality or the thoughts in your mind. Thoughts of what went wrong in the past, and what might go wrong in the future, create emotions that are out of tune with reality. ([Location 1801](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09LLTRR3Z&location=1801)) - If your emotions are in harmony with the reality unfolding before you, they are generally healthy and support the quality of your life. When both your heart and mind are in harmony with reality, energies don’t release outwardly because nothing is blocking them. The power of these unblocked energies passing through the lower heart can then be utilized to rise into the higher parts of the heart. Because you are neither suppressing nor expressing, the deeper spiritual states begin to unfold. ([Location 1806](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09LLTRR3Z&location=1806)) - Reaching this state requires clearing out the samskaras that are blocking the energy flow and not putting any more in there. To do this, learn to handle your heart. This takes practice, just like you practice the piano, a sport, or anything else. We will explore this process in great depth in the following chapters. What it requires is a change in attitude: You begin to accept that things are going to happen, they’re going to hit your heart, and your mind is going to create thoughts to release the built-up energies. You commit to being okay with this process. ([Location 1812](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09LLTRR3Z&location=1812)) - The first technique is called positive thinking. Yogananda used to teach that every time you have a negative thought, replace it with a positive one. This is a very basic and useful technique for bringing about change. It is based on the two types of thoughts we discussed earlier: those created willfully and those that happen automatically. If you notice your mind giving you a hard time while you’re driving—those are automatically generated thoughts. You are not purposely creating them. Now try purposely creating positive thoughts about the situation. If the person in front of you is driving much slower than the speed limit, you might say inside your mind, “Wow. What an opportunity to relax. I can’t be in a rush because the person in front of me won’t let me. I guess it’s time to watch my breath, calm down, and learn to enjoy the experience.” ([Location 1837](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09LLTRR3Z&location=1837)) - The next technique is very traditional and is broadly referred to as mantra. In the most general sense, “mantra” means training your mind to repeat a simple word or phrase over and over until it gets stuck in your mind. Just like a song can get stuck in your mind, a mantra can get stuck in your mind. We all experience that our minds can work in layers. You can be paying attention to someone speaking, and there can still be thoughts going on “in the back of your mind.” Your mind is so brilliant it can multitask. It can create thoughts at multiple levels, and you can be aware of these layers simultaneously. Mantra is offering you a layer of mind that is always there—balanced, pleasant, a safe place to rest. ([Location 1848](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09LLTRR3Z&location=1848)) - The final technique we will discuss for freeing yourself from yourself is generally termed witness consciousness, and it includes the powerful practice of relaxing and releasing. Witness consciousness is deeper than the other techniques because, in the end, it doesn’t require working with the mind. Positive thinking involves creating positive thoughts to replace the negative ones. Mantra involves creating a layer of mind that provides a peaceful and steady environment for rising above the lower layers. Witness consciousness is simply noticing that you are noticing what the mind is doing. You don’t need to interact with the mind. You don’t need to do anything. Just be the one who notices that the mind is creating thoughts, and you are aware of them. In order to do that, you can’t be disturbed by the thoughts that are being created. If the thoughts bother you, you will leave the seat of objective observation and try to change the mind. To truly achieve witness consciousness, you must be willing to let the thoughts be as they may and simply be aware that you are aware of them. ([Location 1878](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09LLTRR3Z&location=1878)) - Spirituality is not about changing the objects you’re looking at. Spirituality is about accepting the objects but not getting sucked into them. It’s about being detached and feeling at peace with whatever your mind and heart are doing. ([Location 1905](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09LLTRR3Z&location=1905)) - First relax, then lean away. You who notices are at a distance from what you are noticing. You don’t have to think about it. Just notice that what you are seeing in there, thoughts and emotions, are all distinct and at a distance from you. Now, lean away from their noise. The mind and emotions make noise. That is not a problem. Just relax and lean away from the noise. When you lean away from the noise, you are creating distance between You (the consciousness) and the objects of consciousness (the thoughts and emotions). In that distance, the samskaras have room to release their energy. It’s going to get uncomfortable, and that’s natural. The discomfort you are experiencing is the discomfort of samskaras being released. They were stored with pain; they are going to release with pain—if you let them. This is the pain that ends all pain. ([Location 1915](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09LLTRR3Z&location=1915)) - Two things happen when you relax and release. One, you stop fighting with the causes of your disturbed mind, and that gives them room to release. Two, you are actually relaxing back into the seat of Self, and you will grow spiritually. If you will do that with the weather, if you will do that with the car in front of you, if you will do that with all these low-hanging fruit situations, you’ll grow every single day. The way to know that you are working with low-hanging fruit is that the situation is resolved simply by letting go inside. There is nothing else to do about it. ([Location 1951](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09LLTRR3Z&location=1951)) - In contrast, if you let go of your reactions to a situation and there is still something in front of you to deal with, then you have some work to do outside. If you lose your job and work with letting go of your negative reaction, that’s good, but you still need to go out and look for a new job. Letting go does not absolve you of your responsibilities in life. You are not letting go of life, you are letting go of your personal reactions to life. Your personal reactions do not help you deal with situations in a constructive manner—they actually cloud your ability to make good decisions. ([Location 1958](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09LLTRR3Z&location=1958)) - This difference holds true for all life’s experiences. When you have an experience, it can simply come in and touch consciousness directly. It doesn’t need the mind to judge it as desirable or undesirable and then store it accordingly. ([Location 1991](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09LLTRR3Z&location=1991)) - If you constantly let go, you will eventually achieve a state of perpetual presence. You will be established in the seat of Self, and you will never leave that seat again for the rest of your life. No matter what happens, no matter who dies, no matter who leaves you, no matter what. All that stuff can still come up, but you will have the power to decide what to do about it. There will be time you never had before, between the event and your reaction to it. Things start to unfold as if in slow motion—even reactive thoughts and emotions. This gives you time to relax and let go. ([Location 2109](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09LLTRR3Z&location=2109)) - I’m the only one living in here, and I have the right to make it a nice place to live.” It’s not about becoming a control freak in there—it’s about learning to surrender. Surrender is not about suppression, and it’s not about control. Surrender is about letting go of weakness and being committed enough to carry out your intent. ([Location 2266](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09LLTRR3Z&location=2266)) - The highest life you can live is when every single moment that passes before you is better off because it did. ([Location 2411](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09LLTRR3Z&location=2411)) - A spiritual life is not about adhering to a given set of rules—it’s about never acting based on your personal energy. You won’t be able to do that to start with, so work on it. When the energy gets disturbed, just let it go. Your initial reaction will generally be your personal stuff coming up. If you let it go, you’ll be able to interact with the moment in front of you in a more constructive manner. Simply ask yourself, “Is there something I can be doing to serve the moment in front of me? Not for me; I already let go of me. Now that I’m clear and nonreactive, is there something I can do to raise the moment as it passes by?” ([Location 2419](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09LLTRR3Z&location=2419))