Being Fearless

AU$12.95

'The idea of the Spiritual Life is to be fearless.'

Are you honest enough, are you fearless enough to see the problem in your life – to face fearlessly what life is throwing at you? Barry Long’s direct questioning means you can’t escape from the truth. There are things in our life that are disturbing us and keeping us from harmony and the state of consciousness we all long for. Barry helps you discover the great honesty that it requires to identify the exact event or person that is troubling you, that ‘prickles you like a hair, or a piece of grass in your vest or blouse.' Because if you cannot deal with it in the external world, you will not be able to deal with it within.

This is session 3 from the 9 day seminar, recorded at Bond University, Gold Coast, Australia in March 2000.

EXTRACT

You have come from an extremely deep place, inside the psyche, inside that physical body. You are a piece of reality, a piece of God, just like I am. But the truth that we are gets covered over. And it takes a lot of experience, and that is what existence is, to realise this truth in us. The spiritual life is about not needing the same experience again and again, any longer then what is needed. This life is about getting rid of experience so that eventually there is nothing that you want or desire anymore, except to have what you have. And that’s what I call equilibrium and peace in the midst of the turmoil which is this world. While you have something in the external world that is disturbing you, you cannot be still enough to retain the state of being, the state of consciousness. The disharmony in your life in the external world will pull you out. The thing is to be honest enough to perceive what is troubling you in existence. This requires direct intelligence; your emotional intelligence will never see it. Your self is in charge until you have mastered it. Your self is your mind as well as your emotions and they are very, very tricky as you know. The self will always hide from the attention of the mind which is endeavouring to see what is the problem in the life. So it requires a great honesty – I can’t say an honesty to yourself but an honesty to your being – to identify the region, the person, the event in your life that is troubling you. Unless you can deal with it in the external world, you will not be able to deal with it within. That is the reason for the external world, or one of the reasons for it. It is there to trouble you, disturb you, until such times that you are able to face fearlessly what it is throwing at you. And of course you’ve been doing that all your life. The external world throws stuff at us through our young life, our middle life, our older life and our mature life. It keeps throwing it. Because it has to do that. It’s our best friend, the means towards getting rid of attachment to existence which is attachment to the world which is attachment to pain and suffering. Without exception everything you are attached to in this world results in pain and suffering. If you are attached to your children they will make you suffer. If you are attached to your partner he or she will make you suffer. If you’re attached to your dog or cat, when it dies, you will suffer. It doesn’t matter what it is. But the saving grace is you can love all those things, but you can’t love them personally, because that is attachment. So the person has got to go and that’s a very long process. One of the ways that I am endeavouring to impart to you is to be honest. What is it in your life that troubles you: an event or person? That just prickles, as though you had a hair, a piece of grass in your vest or blouse so that it creates a little friction now and again and you know it’s there. You wipe it aside it’s so small. But while it’s there it’s going to disturb your emotions and your mind. And you’re going to be worried at times or you’re going to be emotional at times or you’re going to be unhappy at times. Although other times everything is fine. So the spiritual life where I come from requires a great discernment, an extraordinary honesty to yourself to see where this is happening. Where is it in your life that something is still troubling you? I ask you to see it for yourself.

Barry Long

© The Barry Long Trust 2009