Where's the fire?
Where's the love?
Where's the drug uprooted from your system?
Where's the freedom?
This is what spirituality,
This is what religion is all about.
Tragically,
We tend to lose sight of it,
Don't we?
This is what Jesus Christ is all about.
But then we overemphasize the Lord,
Lord,
Don't we?
Where's the fire?
And if worship isn't leading to the fire,
If adoration isn't leading to love,
If the liturgy isn't leading to clearer perception of reality,
If God isn't leading to life,
Of what use is it except to create more division,
More fanaticism,
More antagonism,
Etc.
And so awareness,
It is not from lack of religion in the ordinary sense of the word that the world is suffering,
And you know that.
It is from lack of love,
Lack of awareness.
And love is generated through awareness,
No other way,
No other way.
When the heart is unobstructed,
The result is love.
When the mind is unobstructed,
The result is wisdom.
Understand the obstruction and it will drop.
Understand the obstacles you are putting to the way of love and freedom and happiness,
And they will drop.
Turn on the light of awareness and the darkness will disappear.
Happiness is not something you acquire.
Love is not something that you produce.
Love is not something that you have.
Love is something that has you.
You do not have the wind and the stars and the rain.
You do not possess these things.
You surrender.
And surrender occurs when you are aware of your illusions,
When you are aware of your addictions,
When you are aware of your desires and fears.
First,
Psychological insight.
That is a great help.
Not analysis.
Analysis is paralysis.
Insight is not necessarily analysis.
One of your great American therapists put it very well.
He said it is the aha experience.
Merely analyzing me gives me no help.
It just gives me information.
But if you could produce the aha experience,
That's insight.
That's the understanding of your addictions.
You need time.
So much time that is given to worship and to singing praises and to singing songs could so fruitfully be employed in self-understanding.
Community is not produced by joint liturgical celebrations.
You know deep down in your heart,
And so do I,
That they only serve to taper over differences.
Community is created by understanding the blocks that we put to community.
By understanding the conflicts that arise from our fears and our desires.
Then community arises.
We must always beware of making worship yet another distraction from the important business of living.
And living doesn't mean working in the foreign ministry as we call it in India,
Or working in government,
Or being a big businessman,
Or doing great acts of charity.
That isn't living.
Living is to have dropped all the impediments and to live in present moment freshness.
Look at the birds of the air.
They do not toil and spin.
That is living.
Come alive.
You're dead.
I began by saying people are asleep.
People are dead.
Dead people running governments,
Dead people doing big business,
Dead people educating others.
Come alive.
Now worship must help this or else it's useless.
And increasingly you know this and so do I.
We're losing the youth everywhere.
They see this.
They're not interested.
They're not interested in having more fears and more guilt laid on them.
They're not interested in more sermons and exhortations.
But they are interested in how can I love?
Of course they are.
How can I be happy?
How can I live?
How can I taste these marvelous things that the mystics tell us?
Understanding.
Somebody asked me as I was coming up to the hall this afternoon,
Do you ever feel low?
I certainly do every now and then.
I get my attacks of low feelings.
But you know,
They don't last.
They really don't.
Don't identify.
Here comes the low feeling.
All right.
So you're low,
Feeling low.
Instead of getting tense about it,
Instead of getting irritated with yourself about it,
Understand,
I'm feeling depressed.
I'm feeling disappointed.
The feeling is in me,
Not in the other guy,
Not in the person who didn't write me that letter.
It's not in the exterior world.
It's in me.
You know what that understanding alone does for you?
Try it out.
It's miraculous.
When I suddenly realize that it's in me,
It's not outside.
Because you know,
As long as I think it's outside,
I feel justified in holding on to my feelings.
Anybody would,
No,
No,
Anybody wouldn't feel this way.
Only sleeping people do.
Don't identify with the feeling.
I is not that feeling.
I am not lonely.
I am not depressed.
I am not disappointed.
Disappointment is there.
One watches it.
You'd be amazed how quickly it glides away.
Anything you're aware of keeps changing.
The clouds keep moving.
