May 2023

MISTRUST MUST COME FIRST
     In spiritual meetings such as this is, I can sit here and talk for weeks, and months, and years, and you will not learn a thing. You will not change a thing unless my words are matched by something in you. The thing that must be inside of you is a willingness to listen to the facts behind the words. And these facts behind the words are going to, at the start, seem very threatening to you.
     This will all be unconscious. You won’t know that this process I’ve just described is going on inside of you. That is why it’s necessary for you to sit here and see what you’re thinking about, even as I’m talking to you now. So that you can see, gradually, your fear of the Truth develop, and your defenses coming up. And you might — if you’re very observant — see your resistance to the Truth that could save you. You could see it in your physical posture.
     Don’t you dare start off in your spiritual quest with trust. You’re going to spell ruination for yourself and everyone else that you know. Start with distrust of your present ways, of your present wisdom.
     Do you see why? If you start the spiritual quest by saying, “I’m going to put trust, and faith in.…” what are you putting it in? Your own delusions that you know better, and you don’t know better. What kind of result can there be when you trust your own neurosis? Don’t you see that mistrust must come first? And don’t you see that sooner or later, every person who gets on the path, and stays on the path is going to have to say to himself, “You’re a very foolish human being — all that conceit and all that vanity and all that hardness, and insisting that you know better.”
     Sooner or later, we’re going to have to get to the point where we mistrust ourselves. And do it despite the fear.
     See, what’s going to happen to you when you no longer look on the outside? You are forced to look inside. But you don’t know that there’s anything there because you’ve always had your attention outside — in the government, in your friends, in society which lies to you left and right.
     That’s what you’ve trusted! All you’ve known is something out there which is wrong, which is false.
     You’re going to have to go through this period where there is nothing to think about. Where there is just a letting go. So finally, something that is not a part of you can tell you where your real trust goes, which will be eternal. And you’ll know it from yourself! You’ll feel it. You will live it. You will see your own strength develop, because it’s coming from up there and coming down to you.
     You will know it, without thought, that it’s yours. It’s not depending on your wisdom! It’s not depending on the traveling charlatans of a false government, of other people, of friends, of excitements, of entertainment. It’s not depending on things that come to an end but depending on something that is eternal. And now you know it because you know what eternity is. Eternity is to not think. It’s to be in a certain situation inside yourself that is always being renewed from on high. And this is not philosophy I’m giving you. It is fact.
     Go all the way with it! And someday, you’ll be very quietly and eternally sure of what you are all about, and what life is all about. And for the first time you’ll know what God is all about. And in that is rest!

WHEN DELIRIOUS, GO SERIOUS
     THERE IS NO POWER IN THIS WORLD WHATEVER. You must never acknowledge anything as being superior to the Spirit of Truth. There is no power in this world whatever. Dark forces are a bluff. Notice when you’re overwhelmed. Become utterly serious. Say, “I am going to become serious.”