Kindle Notes & Highlights
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May 25 - December 12, 2016
absolutely need conflicts, relationship difficulties, moral failures, defeats to our grandiosity, even seeming enemies, or we will have no way to ever spot or track our shadow self. They [others] are our necessary mirrors.”
Evil proceeds from a lack of consciousness…. You cannot heal what you do not acknowledge, and what you do not consciously acknowledge will remain in control of you
“Repression says, ‘If I don’t look at you, you will leave me alone.’ To which the shadow answers, “I can do things that will make you look at me.”
Cheer up your hearts, and remember that ye are free to act for yourselves—to choose the way of everlasting death or the way of eternal life. (2 Nephi 10:23)
The Lord sees with compassion our condition, our original innocence and our present confusion. We find in the scriptures: But when he saw the multitudes, he was moved with compassion on them, because they fainted, and were scattered abroad, as sheep having no shepherd. (Matthew 9:36) So we were innocent before, but now it is time to grow up. The days of knowledge have come. We do have a choice. Now it is time to identify our real issues.
Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me…. Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation; and uphold me with thy free spirit. (Psalm 51:10)
A meditation master, Sakyong Mipham, explains: Discursive thoughts lead to emotions—irritation, anxiety, passion, aggression, jealousy, pride, greed—which lead to suffering…. We begin to see that we have to work with these intense emotions because if we don’t, they’ll grow. Once they grow, we act on them. When we act on them, they create our environment.1 These kinds of emotions give us no rest. When we can’t rest in the present moment, and we can’t be satisfied, we conduct our life aggressively, always looking for that which will satisfy. We employ jealousy, competition, fixation, and
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Three of the main defilements (lists vary as to the tradition) are identified as desire, aversion, and delusion
The art of focusing attention so that one thought, one possible action, prevails over all the other possible ones competing for dominance in consciousness—this is the true moral6 act….
Elder Dallin Oaks puts this responsibility for our desires squarely upon us: Desires dictate our priorities, priorities shape our choices, and choices determine our actions. The desires we act on determine our changing, our achieving, and our becoming…. Righteous desires cannot be superficial, impulsive, or temporary. They must be heartfelt, unwavering, and permanent. So motivated, we will seek for that condition described by the Prophet Joseph Smith, where we have “overcome the evils of [our lives] and lost every desire for sin.” That is a very personal decision.… Therefore, what we
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Even as you desire of me so it shall be unto you; and if you desire, you shall be the means of doing much good in this generation. (D&C 6:8) For the fulness of mine intent is that I may persuade men to come unto the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob and be saved. (1 Nephi 6:4)
Now they, after being sanctified by the Holy Ghost, having their garments made white, being pure and spotless before God, could not look upon sin save it were with abhorrence; and there were many, exceedingly great many, who were made pure and entered into the rest of the Lord their God. (Alma 13:12)
Always on the alert for the purity of a desire, we should note in passing that it is possible to want even good things too much, and then the wantings become ego-desires. Alma recognizes this temptation in himself while exclaiming his desire that there be no more sin and that there might not be more sorrow upon all the face of the earth. But behold, I am a man, and do sin in my wish; for I ought to be content with the things which the Lord hath allotted unto me. (Alma 29:2-3)
Many desires take on the flavor of addiction. We can become alert to desire when it appears and then reflect on where it is leading: “Where is it taking us? Do we want to go there? Can we see how our wanting leads to suffering?”10 Am I just wanting and wanting and never contented? Do I do or buy things that I don’t really want just because the engine of desire is running? Wherefore, do not spend money for that which is of no worth, nor your labor for that which cannot satisfy…. Come unto the Holy One of Israel, and feast upon that which perisheth not, neither can be corrupted, and let your
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Aversion is experienced in many ways: as anger, hatred, fear, irritation, annoyance, contraction, impatience, or sorrow. It is the polar opposite of desire, except that it is what we do not
Aversion is the expression of the condemning mind. It reflects resistance to what is, and therefore has a blinding effect to the spiritual possibilities of the situation.
You may notice the anger, but if you’re not also noticing the self-righteousness, the anger will continue to grow.”
The energy of aversion makes us want to separate ourselves from our experience, making it impossible for us to explore the present moment with a spirit of discovery.
The ability we want to cultivate is to see the person or the situation in a way that creates spaciousness, rather than constriction of our mind.
Truly, we can’t fully understand any situation. A situation develops as it must, given all the factors involved. Not that it can’t be changed when that is the wise thing to do, but that the cluster of elements as the situation presents itself, in some way, must be, as the product of many converging events. Who knows what premortal plans might be governing the situation?
Wisdom requires accepting what we are tempted to reject, to stay open without condemnation, and to see the larger reality. Acceptance doesn’t imply passivity or inaction or condoning. Rather, it implies refraining from taking a position, that is, a decision to stay open so that we can see the reality of a situation and be open to the wisdom available.
Aggression has many forms such as interrupting others, offering them unsolicited advice, trying to convince them, over-talking them, or taking the spotlight, or pressing your point while insisting on being right. Instead of acting on aggressive impulses, we can choose instead to enter the peaceful low valley, as Nephi prays: May the gates of hell be shut continually before me, because that my heart is broken and my spirit is contrite! O Lord, wilt thou not shut the gates of thy righteousness before me, that I may walk in the path of the low valley, that I may be strict in the plain road. (2
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Perhaps “clean” finally amounts to full surrender of each thought or feeling to the Lord. “Look unto me in every thought”; He says, “doubt not, fear not” (D&C 6:36). Full surrender—heart, might, mind, and strength—underlies full consecration and is the essence of that covenant. Indeed, the Lord’s angel teaches this principle to Adam—and to his covenant children: “Thou shalt do all that thou doest in the name of the Son….” (Moses 5:8) Surrender to the Lord introduces us into a new spiritual dimension and experience, even in the most trying circumstances, as in the persecutions that caused
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There are three Things extremely hard, Steel, a Diamond, and to know one's self. (Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard’s Almanac)
sidetracks which lead to a distorted, ego-centered version of spirituality; we can deceive ourselves into thinking we are developing spiritually when instead we are strengthening our egocentricity through spiritual techniques. This fundamental distortion may be referred to as spiritual materialism.1 Our minds are tricky. Even in self-improvement quests we can be deceived. Spiritual quests easily become just another tool of the ego. “It is important to see that the main point of a spiritual practice is to step out of the bureaucracy of ego.”
Most bogus religion, in my opinion, is highly sacrificial in one or another visible way, but not loving at all.
vulnerability to accepting intellectualization of gospel principles instead of being changed by them; he writes: It is important to understand the difference between insight and intellectual understanding…. Many people fail to see that their primary reason for studying “spiritual” teachings is [that] they enjoy the concepts. The desire to go quickly to the next concept and to gather more and more information and to read more and more spiritual books and to think about what has been read and to discuss what has been read and thought about, are symptoms of the intellectual appetite and
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The problem was that pursuing these objectives was a project too much in behalf of myself. I could not see it then, but in a very subtle way my quest continued the very preoccupation with myself I was trying to overcome. And it twisted my goal of being true into the goal of being true to me, and being true to me, for my sake, often came before the interests and needs of others…. My way showed itself as I responded in a hurried manner to a student’s question in the hall—because, after all, I had important things to do; and in a conversation with a colleague, thinking of what I would say next
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we are used to getting certain “perks” from our various ego programs—power, gain, praise, pleasure, superiority. But the Spirit of Truth leads us to see that all our protective and self-promoting programs, our acting against our true nature,
refusal to forget ourselves and to be at one with others.
our emotional problems are refusals to love…. Our difficulty does not lie in what was done to us in the past but in what we are doing in the present.
key point and the doorway to freedom: ego trips are refusals to love.
we are hardened, fearful of losing our “perks.” If we are emotionally troubled, it is not because we were created to be that way but because we have betrayed, perverted, and denied what we were created to be. The condition of our liberation from our unwanted desires and anxieties is our responsiveness, in love, to what others need from us, and to the supreme loving act that makes our love possible….
priestcrafts are that men preach and set themselves up for a light unto the world, that they may get gain and praise of the world; but they seek not the welfare of Zion. Behold, the Lord hath forbidden this thing; wherefore, the Lord God hath given a commandment that all men should have charity, which charity is love. And except they should have charity they were nothing. Wherefore, if they should have charity they would not suffer the laborer in Zion to perish. But the laborer in Zion shall labor for Zion. (2 Nephi 26:29–31)
By simple awareness and deeper-than-usual honesty we can catch ourselves being prompted by some ego motive—and we can make another choice, a choice for love.
anyone at all who brings himself to nothing will find out who he is.”
The eye of a needle is a symbol of that—you won‘t get through it unless you reduce yourself to energy. There is no future for the false self.
Our motto can become: “Seek to serve, not to impress.”
IV PRACTICE
CHAPTER 17 OUR BEAUTIFUL MIND
For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind. (2 Timothy 1:7)
Many of our emotional and spiritual problems begin, not so much because of difficult circumstances, or traumatic experiences of the past, or because there’s something inherently wrong with us, but rather because of the way we have learned to use our mind.
“I just don’t belong,” or “I’m not as smart,” or “If people knew, they’d reject me,” or “I can never be good enough,”
that Dr. Daniel Brown, a psychologist and researcher at the Harvard Medical School, had. He and a group of psychologists came to interview the Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of Tibet. One of the Americans asked the Dalai Lama, through the translator, how Buddhists deal with the issue of negative self-talk, talk like “I’m not good enough.” The translator and His Holiness then began a long discussion in their language. The American psychologists, sitting there, began to wonder what was going wrong. Finally they learned that these Easterners did not understand the idea of negative self-talk.
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the Dalai Lama said that there is no such concept in Tibetan culture of self-loathing or self-deprecation, or as he put it, “a lack of compassion for oneself.”
world-mind, characterized by fearful, negative thoughts and feelings. Then, as we grew, we lost conscious awareness of our original beauty, our joy, and our love. Happily, these qualities of our original self are still there
under fear’s influence, we may find ourself doing many self-defeating things to try to quiet the fear, to appear good enough, to get love—maybe in any form—and then, we suffer, we experience stress, because we’re living against our true nature—
cheer up your hearts, and remember that ye are free to act for yourselves—to choose the way of everlasting death or the way of eternal life (2 Nephi 10:23).
“Look unto me in every thought, doubt not, fear not;” (D&C 6:36) “Pray always and I will pour out my Spirit upon you” (D&C 19:38); “Cry unto the Lord for all thy support;…whithersoever thou goest, let it be in the Lord; yea, let all thy thoughts be directed unto the Lord…” (Alma 37:36-37).
This deception is only possible through our having forgotten who we are. If we had a clear memory of who we really were, and how we thought, and how we felt in the premortal world, how we loved pure truth, this earth deception would never work;
