October 2017

BE MISUNDERSTOOD
     Refuse to relieve the anxiety. Don't know how to handle it! It is my knowing how to handle it that fouls my life up, that keeps me in self-worship.
     “I’ll defy all those dark ideas inside me that command me to make the phone call, write the letter, get the ambition that will make me feel better. I'll defy the dark ideas even if I have no strength at all. Who said I had to have strength? I just have to do it!”
     “I’ll catch myself in very small ways. For example, I'm about to say something to someone and because I'm watchful — the SENTRY is alert — I understand my motive in saying that. It is because I want to relieve a little bit of anxiety lest that person misunderstand me. Let that person misunderstand me! Let the unsaid explanation of myself or my actions remain unsaid. Let it lie there! Don't pick it up! Go through it! Watch what happens to me!”
     This is a new experience. Well, isn't it? You relieved the anxiety before and had the old, repetitious experience. Just let it lie there and in a very fascinated frame of mind say, "You know, this is really interesting. This is really novel. This is really unique! Here I am in this uncomfortable situation and I have about a dozen different emotions going through me. There's a bit of guilt. I can see a little tension. I can see a little wondering what the other person thinks of me. I hid it from myself. Now do I understand what it means to open the window a little bit? I'll open the window in fear and trembling if necessary and begin to see where I am. I'll see what's happening to me.
     “Take a look. This is what it is all about. And I can do this exercise any time I want — fifty times a day, one hundred times a day. There is no need for me to be in a dull daze anymore. I can follow these instructions, finding my own ways to refuse to relieve my tension.”
     Don’t do it. Don’t say it. See what happens. Bear it. Feel it. Notice it. After awhile “I’ll begin to see that my very pain is a teacher. I wouldn't allow it to teach me before because I relieved it. I hid it. I got it out of sight. So, I’ll remember the phrase from now on: DON’T RELIEVE THE ANXIETY, AND LET PAIN BE MY TEACHER.”
     Oh, how fast and how marvelously the lessons will come! And with the coming of these lessons, in equal proportions will be the disappearance of pain, of nervousness and of everything that is tormenting me.
     Isn’t that nice?

LET GO OF YOURSELF
     Poor sir, poor madam, how difficult it is for you to let go of yourself! Ah, the difficulty is authentic difficulty but we can do it. We're going to do it. There is no such thing as failure in this room. If you want to succeed — listen to this, this is an absolute promise — if you want to succeed it's as good as done.
     If you want to stay you, then go ahead home and live with you. I have nothing in common with you. I'm not going to go back to the old life.