End Thought...

 
  “So I’m going to catch myself without making another mistake of  living in time. Thought is always in time. So I break thought, then there will be a pause in which there is no thought at all and in that I am free. And when you do this for the first time, when you really see that you can be without a thought at all, you’ll want to work on yourself every minute because you have sighted the way out at last. So that you are not depending on thought to keep your false personality intact. It is only thinking that keeps it in place. Our task is not to just get it out of place but to throw it out altogether. So that I can see that something is self-defeating and then say “All right, I saw it.” I am not going to linger on it so as to feel myself as a great sinner. I am going to drop thought. I would say that the most frightening thought that ever comes to a human being is the idea of coming to the end of thought. Because when there is no thinking anymore, you, I, cease to exist, which thank heaven, is what we were looking for all along. But we are afraid to look at it because what would happen if I let go of my success, my reputation of being the nice man? What would happen is that you would be out of the cage. But we don’t know this. We have it exactly backward. What we value is ruining us. And what we reject could save us. It is best to reverse our thinking.”

UNCHAIN YOURSELF

     “This is internal work. When you free that man, that woman, you’ll free yourself. If you chain them, you’ll chain yourself.”

CATCH AND DETECT WEAK WORDS

     “A spiritual exercise is valuable. The more concise and clear you can make it, the more valuable it becomes, and the more you connect it with your daily activities, the more practical, healthy and helpful it becomes for you. The exercise is as follows: You’re to detect weak and wavering words while you’re talking. You’re in hundreds of conversations a week. You may be on the street talking with someone, in the factory, on the telephone and so on. When you talk to other people, you say things to them, make comments, observations, you might even be helping them in some way, giving them information that they might require, but weak and wavering words is to be your reference point. You’re to hear yourself say them, which indicates of course weak and wavering attitudes. You change your mind about something, or you suddenly feel that maybe you had to say something to explain your previous remark because, if you didn’t explain it, they would suddenly think less of you or get ready to criticize you. You’re to catch your weak and wavering nature in moment-by-moment action as it expresses itself through weak or wavering words.”