"You can insist on having your own way. Oh, but I better tell you
something. You insist on having your way. God also insists on having His
Way. Now who do you think is going to win?
Doesn't that double thought reveal something to you? I demand to get mad. I
demand to feel as if I'm just not getting a square deal at all in this life
and never have. I demand that feeling, that attitude, that hysterical
outburst that I'm just not getting what's coming to me. Now, I said you can
have it.
Everybody does have what they prefer; therefore they prefer to get knocked
down by themselves, by their own preference. This leads us to a incredibly
profound idea and we'll look at it - the idea that billions and billions of
humans have not only chosen to be in constant conflict, in constant gloom.
They have not only been the originator of that state but they have chosen
in spite of everything to remain there, to continue to be the chooser of
their own desolation. Now I said this is profound.
Let's get even more profound. Why, why have you - I'm bringing you into
this talk - why have you chosen to have an interior, agitated way of life -
not only chosen it but get up every morning with a deliberate choosing to
repeat it? Why do you jump at the slightest affront - at the smallest
pushing away of what you have desired? There has to be something very
strange going on when anyone, and it is practiced by the billions, when
anyone would say, and this is what you are saying, I'm exposing what you're
saying to yourself, fantastic that anyone would say that suffering,
agitation, jealousy is a good thing for me to practice. Yes, you have said
that and the proof of that is that you do practice it. Now, profounder yet
- you go with me on this now.
I want you to think in a new way, which will reveal wonders to you. And I'm
going to help you to think in a new way right now. I have said, in a brief
summary, that it's fantastic that grief, sorrow, worry - it's fantastic
that anyone would get up in the morning and determine to repeat the worries
of yesterday. I know it doesn't sound strange because everybody does it.
You think that's common and it's popular, and it is common and it is very
popular.
You're supposed to be the unique man or woman who breaks the pattern."
from a talk given 1/1/1988
