You know,
We hear the answers are inside us and they are.
Muktinanda said the answer is you and it is.
But the trouble comes when we don't know how to go inside.
We don't know how to build a relationship with ourselves.
We've just always functioned from the outside of ourselves.
And we have no idea how to go inside.
Well,
The thing is that it's when it stops working to stay on the outside of yourself that you'll become motivated to come to life from the inside.
It's when,
You know,
Maybe you fail terribly,
You know,
Or,
You know,
Your primary relationship breaks up.
You know,
When your outside world sort of falls apart and you're thrown back on yourself.
Amma says,
You know,
When you're a zero,
You're a hero.
It's a wonderful time to start building a relationship with yourself,
With your true self,
To come from the inside to discover that the answer really is you.
So one of my breakthroughs was when I began to be gentle with myself.
I realized that I had been basically spraying weed killer on myself by all my criticism and self-hatred.
And I stopped doing that,
Or I at least observed myself doing it.
And so as I did that,
I observed self-hatred and overly self-critical patterns.
I was grossed out and they became smaller,
You know,
And I gave the whole complex over a lot.
And gradually over time,
I learned to become more and more loving with myself.
And as I did that,
My life opened up and became a lot gentler.
Now it takes time and it takes a courage to change patterns when we've had many years of,
You know,
Believing life is this way or that we're a certain way.
But it can be done and it's worth it.
It's really worth it to learn to become gentle and forgiving of yourself.
You know,
To be able to put your arms around yourself as you are and know that you are entitled to be here and that you're as valuable as anybody else.
That's what Buddha said that,
You know,
You deserve the love of God,
Your love.
You deserve love as much as anybody else in the world.
And it's really true.
You really deserve love and it's coming to you.
It's always there for you.
And just open up your mind and open up your heart and may you feel it.
Thanks for listening.
