SECRETS OF LIFE
1-28-24
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"There's a very strange fascination about being the center of your own
attention, accusing yourself, condemning yourself, sentencing yourself.
There's a very peculiar, very weird wish on the part of human beings to
want to be a part of the drama no matter how bad it is. You can't be the
prosecutor, you'll be the persecuted. You can't be the judge, you'll be
the judged.
And all this is for the purpose of you thinking that that is a method by
which you can find your place in life, some place. I described briefly
the emotions and the despairs of the defendant in his chair, very small,
huddling there with everything else enormous hovering over him. That is
an exact description of your inner life.
You will now walk out of the courtroom. You are not on trial at all. I'm
telling you that. I also told you that you like to be there. All eyes
are on you.
Oh, you better make a note as a side study of this: to notice the
fantastic yearning we have just to be noticed, just to be the center of
attention. A little child knows that. Why do you think he howls?
Everyone else is quiet in the room, he howls, the little kid yells out.
He knows very well what's going to happen. Everyone is going to look.
And why do we want that? We want that because we think that we can
affirm and confirm our existence by having other people look at us. Not
having even the slightest realization that when they look at the
physical self, that's not our life at all. A desperate human being will
do anything, no matter how ridiculous, no matter how low, no matter how
hurtful, in order to attract attention to himself because that attention
is a distraction, distraction from him facing the fact that he really is
nothing at all in his own eyes.
And by the way, he doesn't have to be, she doesn't have to be. So do
a little extra work, see if you can catch yourself attracting attention.
What would it be? This is your work."
from a talk given 12/5/1986
V. H.'s Higher World - MP3 CD Volume 8, talk 181, track 2
