September 2026

PLACE BEING AHEAD OF DOING
Place being someone ahead of doing something.
Human beings are under the trance of going to as many places as possible, doing as many things as possible, meeting people, chatting, wasting their time. They're always running, running, running.
     Pause and think of how seldom you slow down or stop. Most people live by the western song — do you remember the western song, "Back in the Saddle Again"? Even the horse had sense enough to stop. (Laughter)
    Now I want to tell you something this morning — it’s very serious to you and it’s extremely important to you. What I have described, the running around, is not life. It is unlife. It is movement, mental, physical, emotional, sexual, you name it. It is simply a physical body going places, getting all excited in the mind about something, about the smallest thing. People are so desperate to assure themselves that they are doing right things, that they deliberately allow themselves to feel good or bad over the smallest incident.
     Now here’s your first exercise. You're to see how people are constantly manufacturing what they call their life. The smallest incident and they want to blame someone, give someone a hard look, or they want to fly off into some emotional flight over the non-arrival of a letter. Now, I'm asking you to examine your physical and mental and emotional movements that you now take as life.
     They are not life at all. They are all time-actions. They are all repetitious. None of them are satisfying. So you have to do a lot of self-investigation just to find out that you do not have authentic living.
     All right, now come on, I'm going to challenge you. What would you call running around, doing things, keeping your mind agitated, exploding emotionally at the first opportunity, having very stern opinions about things. You know how to straighten out this world. You know everything about everything. Question. Come on now, answer it. What would you call that? Well, let me tell you what sanity calls it. It calls it madness and unlife.

STOP RUNNING AWAY
We’ll describe what a failure is. A failure in life is someone who still gets hurt in his emotions. A failure is someone who chases around all day long, in his mind and with his physical self, who chases around trying to run away from that pain. A failure is someone who refuses to stop running, someone who won't stay home and study the pain. They're not going to outrun it. You can't outrun your shadow. You can't outrun the suffering that you have because, as has been previously explained, you and what wounds you are the same thing.