Find This Effortlessness of Being the Self (Silent Retreat) - 16th Oct. 2015

Find this effortlessness of being the Self. So far, it has seemed like we have been making some effort to discover the Self. Know that this naturalness, this existence itself, is your natural state. Picking up all these ideas and concepts, you will find that it has been completely futile, no matter what the mind is telling you about it. Nobody wants the person back. Whatever the mind might be promising to you, whatever fears it might be threatening you about, nobody wants this identity back. It's time that we stop buying these excuses of the mind. Effortlessly allow them to come and go, because by now it must be completely clear to you that this voice is not authentically yours. It belongs to you, it appears inside you, but it does not represent who you are.

And when you buy an idea, then know for yourself: 'I am buying this now.' If you buy an idea, if I say 'I am buying this,' it might seem a little bit silly what I'm saying, but it's what we are doing. So why don't you admit it? 'I'm buying the idea that I won't be free.' That means I'm still buying the idea that freedom is some feeling. I'm buying the idea that something is supposed to happen to my body once I'm free. I'm buying the idea that some sort of utopia will be here when there is freedom. Which are the ideas that you are buying? So, just in silence for maybe up to five minutes, do an internal audit and find out which ideas are still being bought, which ideas still have the most force.