How to Change Your Life
Edited extract from the Gold Coast Talk July 1993
The purpose of creation is to be free of unhappiness and enjoy life as it is now, revealing itself every moment. By the magic of the divine psyche, my willingness to enjoy the creation as it unfolds in my life changes the circumstances of my life, so that I take the past out of those circumstances and they start to appear to me as the present; and therefore fulfil my needs. So whatever I need is provided for me in the circumstances of my life without me having to battle for it, as in the past.
As I enjoy my life more and more every moment - by not blaming or accusing others for spoiling it or ruining it, or blaming myself for spoiling it - a divine miracle happens in the psyche. The circumstances of my life start to work for me, instead of me having to work against them and fight. Simultaneously, as I descend into this state of joy, which becomes absence of wanting or trying or choice, because all is provided for me, I discover a knowledge which is not dependent on knowing anything.
So I say to you: Don’t think about your unhappiness, because that will make you go into your self and stir the emotions, and then you’ll go into orbit, on and on, thinking. The thing to do is to look into your external life and see what is making you unhappy. That will be a real guide.
If I look into my life, I’ll see the reflection of my unhappiness there. If I go into my self, I’ll only get emotional impressions. My emotional self is my acquired self. I’ve picked it up since I was born. The circumstances of my life are the real reflection of myself. So if I can only attend to the real reflection of myself in particular aspects of my life, I will actually deal with the acquired self.
If you go into your acquired self, it will make more of itself. Whereas by looking into your life with honesty and straightness, you will get a true reflection, not a discursive, circular one. And that will reduce your acquired self, your unhappiness.
Be what I am every moment, free of unhappiness, and allow that creativity to unfold and express itself. But this does mean cleaning up your past. It means that as the circumstances of your life are presented to you, you’ve got to face the past in them - because every circumstance is the past repeating itself in the present. There’s an element of past in it that has not been faced. So if it disturbs you, you’ve got to look into it with honesty and say, ‘What is in this, which is disturbing me? What am I not seeing? What am I not facing in this? Where am I not being honest in this relationship or this event?’
Stillness Is the Way