The Never Ending Train Journey To Somewhere Better

Please note: This track was recorded live and may contain background noises.
Embedded in our cultures, buried in our mind is the belief in some way that we are not good enough, that we lack something and that we need to do and be better. This is what could call our Core Belief. This Core Belief affects everything we do in life and can limit us immensely.

Suryacitta by way of a charming metaphor explains not only why and how we hold this belief but wjhat we can do to free ourselves of it.

Transcript

Hello. So, At some point in our lives, And it's the timing slightly different for each individual, But we start to see all those around us trying to make their lives better, Trying to improve themselves, Trying to make a difference, And it's completely understandable. Okay? But I just want to add a different angle to this. So, We get the message that we are not enough. We're not good enough. We're not enough. We get the sense that there's an inadequacy here. Yeah? And so, What we do at some point, We jump on the train, The train to a place called somewhere better. So, We jump on this with the rest of the world, Almost. It's such a, I wouldn't say a flaw, But it's such an illusion. It's such a dreamed up thing that there's somewhere better. Now, I don't mean to say we don't make sensible choices in our lives. We send the children to a good school or the nearest school, Or we lock the doors of an evening, Or we have the best pension plan, Or whatever. Yeah? We eat decent food. Not all the time, But most of the time we eat decent food. Those are just natural things that we do. We don't even have to think about them. Yeah? But I'm not talking about those. You know what I'm talking about. And this journey on the train to somewhere better is endless. It actually, There are only signposts saying somewhere better. So, You get on this train at some point in your life, And then off we go to somewhere better. And we see a signpost, We're pulling into a station, We see a signpost, Somewhere better. Ahead, Oh, There's somewhere even better than this. Most of the time, We don't even go off the train to explore this place called somewhere better, Because actually it doesn't exist. It's just, It's the same here. It's here. It's here. The illusion is that we're on this train. Yeah? The illusion is we're off to somewhere better. That's the grand illusion. And as I say, It doesn't mean to say if you want to learn the saxophone, You don't do it. Of course. But it's the investment. It's the endless striving for it to be a better person, A better human being. That that will do it for me. Learning the saxophone or the piano or whatever brings some pleasure. But it's not the meaning of life. It doesn't fill that void of inadequacy, That void of not okayness, Of something's missing. It doesn't fill it. Nothing fills it. Because a thing won't fill it. An activity won't fill it. So we get on this train and off we go. Forget this. Forget what's around me. I'm not interested. I'm off to somewhere better. It's kind of crazy. And then we pull in, You know, The train slows down at a station, So to speak, And oh, Somewhere better. Oh, That way. So off we go. And we just keep on this train. It never arrives. There's no destination called somewhere better. There are only the signposts. And the signposts, They're all over in advertising. It's in the DNA almost. It's embedded in the cultures. They're somewhere better. Capital S, Capital B, A place, A name of somewhere. Oh, I can get there. I just need to try harder. And that trying harder maybe, I'm going to stop my thoughts. That would be somewhere better. Good luck with that one. It doesn't work, Guys. It doesn't work. Even Buddhism, And you know, And I'm a Buddhist, Even Buddhism can fool you into believing there's somewhere better. You know, Nirvana, Enlightenment, The end of this journey. Enlightenment isn't at the end of a journey. It's this. It's here. It's how we see here. It's how we experience here. See, There's a split. Along with the, You know, This getting on this train to somewhere better. What precedes that is this split that happens. It's like when we're a newborn, We are just, We're just wholeness itself. There's nothing missing. When we're hungry, We cry, And mum feeds us. There's nothing wrong. Even when we're hungry, It's not that it's wrong. If we're uncomfortable, We cry when we try to help us to be comfortable, Or daddy, Whatever. But at some point, And psychologists have done tests, And it begins around about the age of two and a half to three, Around about then, Then, And I see it in, You know, Young people, Nephews, Nieces, And I see it in them. You know, It's almost complete by late teens. Not in everybody, But it's almost complete. There's a feeling of being split off from the whole. So we feel like a, Like a splinter, Or a sort of a piece of shrapnel. Yeah, Probably a splinter is a better term. So there's the log or the, You know, Whatever. And there's a, We feel splintered off, We feel like a separate from the whole. And so somewhere better comes out of this, Oh, I don't feel whole. There's something missing. So I need to get to somewhere better to fill it, To fill this hole, To fill this void of emptiness, Or not quite okayness. This feeling of low self-esteem, Low self-esteem goes along with the split because we naturally feel we've lost wholeness and we haven't, We haven't lost it. It's your nature. And the reason that we feel cut off like that, And that's where all the suffering begins. That's where it all is. It's because we start to progressively, And progressively live in the mind. A newborn for a few years, Just, It's just this, Ah, A bottle of energy, But we progressively move into the mind. So we experience life from here. So we feel cut off. Of course, Then we're splitting the world up into things and this and that. Everything's split up. Are we just one of those splits? We're just one of those splinters. The world isn't like that. Life isn't like that. Only the human being experiences life like that because we have this capacity to remove ourselves abstractedly, But only in the mind, Only conceptually. And so that's why in our work, Oh no, Let me put it in the way. So I said earlier that this promise of somewhere better is endemic in our cultures. That's part of it. You're not good enough, So get to somewhere better. But that promise of somewhere better is also in the mind. The stories it tells you, You're not good enough. You're useless. You're this, You're that. So we listen to that all day long. So we need to be somewhere better. So let's get away from this. Let's feel better so this shuts up. It never shuts up in the way we think it does because you get to somewhere better in inverted commas and it's always somewhere better. It's endless. It's absolutely endless. It's tiring at some point you just feel tired with the whole thing. What am I doing? And so the cultures, This idea of not good enough is embedded in the culture and then it becomes embedded in our own mind, In our own thoughts. We believe our thoughts. We believe those stories. This is not good enough, I'm not good enough. Life isn't how I want it. We have certain feelings or emotions. I don't want this. It happens on that level. I don't want it. So we try to split. So from this apparent splinter, We start to splinter off part of the splinter until we have what we think that how this splinter should be. And we're not even a splinter. It's just all mind made. I know this is difficult to comprehend but how we heal our life in that way, How we come to wholeness once again is to realize that we're not split. We're not really split. It feels like it. So in meditation we start to watch the stories during the day. Watch the stories. Don't set yourself standards like I'm going to watch it. I'm going to watch it most of the day. And when you realize that you haven't, You give yourself a hard time, It's just more thinking. That's why some people give up on it. They're trying too hard. They're trying not to be a splinter. They're trying to be whole. They're trying to get out of this. You can't get out of this with the mind. You have to step out of the mind into the body, The bodily sensations, The hearing, The seeing, The feeling, The smelling and the tasting. And from here, From this vantage point of awareness of presence, Awareness of presence or presence awareness, We begin to watch the mind. You have to watch it. That's a thought. Oh my goodness. Yeah, It's a thought. And when we're feeling things we don't want to feel, We start to turn towards them. We start to, Okay, Hello. Okay, This is uncomfortable. I don't like it, But I'm going to do my best not to push it away, Not to think about it, Not to analyse it or judge it. If we do, It's fine. Just observe the thoughts. Some of you may have heard of Samsara and Nirvana. Nirvana is the equivalent of enlightenment. It's the realm of peace as it were. And Samsara is the worldly world of discontent. So there's Samsara and there's Nirvana. But they're not different. They're only different. The difference is only conceptual. It's only conceptual guys. So relax. Come back home to the body. The body doesn't feel separate. Look at your hand. Is your hand saying I'm separate? Is your leg saying I'm separate and I'm not good enough? Are your eyes saying I'm not good enough? No, They're not. It's only the mind. And of course we believe that because we're living in there. So all the work I do is about getting you out of the mind, Seeing the mind for what it is. It's a beautiful tool and coming back to what's actually happening because a lot of what's going on in the mind isn't actually happening in real life. It's just made up. A lot of it's imagined. Your conversations with people who are not with you, It's just imagined. And then the suffering that comes from it, The angst or the frustration because she's disagreeing with you, She's not even with you, Is imagined into being. How else if she's not with you or he's not with you, It's all going on in the mind. Okay. I think that'll do. Thank you guys. Bye bye.

Reviews

The message that was always there but rejected to keep looking for the answer to this mystery we call life. Thanks for the reminder . 🙏

As always, this was reality provoking and vital information. I will be 78 years young in just a few days, and though I profoundly realized the truth of this about seven and a half years ago, when I then made the choice to close my business and retire, there is no don’t that such mind driven pressures are still something to reckon with. Life has certainly become calmer, more peaceful, and rewarding than the 60 or so years before that, as the train took off, based on what I was learning in life, and how I felt about myself. I continue and will continue to turn down that train ride as often as possible, even in my mind….not so easy! I thank you again! 🙏💖🕊️

Thank You. Veru clear. And your laugh is Nice🙂🌈☀️

i love your talks. they really inspire me and they are very relatable to every day life 😊