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QUESTION: Would you say that what we call ‘will power’ is derived from essence? I'm wondering about the effort required by a person to do a thing despite extreme mechanical resistance to doing that thing and if this same effort…
A MAIN TENET of the fourth way system is that specific obstacles keep consciousness ‘asleep’. These obstacles are delineated as imagination, identification, inner-considering, lying, unnecessary talk, and the external expression of unpleasant or negative emotions. Eastern (non-dual) teachings explain a…
Identification is a force, a pressure. It is the psychological gravity behind the tendency for awareness to be unwittingly drawn to and into thoughts, sensations, feelings, objects, and the visible world at large, and to attach itself to all of them. The…
WHAT IS commonly called the higher Self refers to pure consciousness or awareness which is silent. It is not silent in the sense of how an object or voice is silent. It is the silent dimension of the presence of conscious awareness.…
Ouspensky said that consciousness and identification are opposite sides of the same coin. Did he mean we have to reverse identification? He meant that when awareness is unconscious, it is on the verge of becoming identified. And conversely, when awareness…
Does more awareness make the pain and suffering go away? It makes the identification go away, which releases the energy from pain and suffering. They remain, but they are less charged because your identity is less wrapped up in them.…
THE IDEA of essence and personality in the fourth way is often presented as two separate things that are related. Essence is described as who we are as we are born, which includes our physical body, skin color, biological gender,…
It feels painful somehow to just give up problems and watch the ego dissolve. The pain of the ego dissipating is not a real pain. It is an imaginary pain of an imaginary identity. The Pure Being watching the dissipation…
Can you talk about the mind’s over-indulgence in thoughts and how this drives the ego? The ego is a result of awareness losing consciousness of itself and burying its head in the sand of thoughts, emotions, sensations, and movement. This…
The mind is a jar that contains things which we experience as thoughts, emotions, sensations, ideas, opinions, decisions, reactions, memories, doubts, fears, expectations, anxieties, suspicions, pain — the entire gamut of our interpretation of life. They are all there in the jar where lighter…