Stand where you are: your circumstances are your life
Recording 11 of 48
Align with what stands around you rather than escape it
Your circumstances are your life. Take every practical step you can, then pause. In the pause, rest—this is the inner seventh day. Thought is the only problem; stillness is the cure.
LENGTH: 2 HOURS AND 46 MINUTES
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
YEAR RECORDED: 1994
PLACE RECORDED: BOND UNIVERSITY, AUSTRALIA
MAIN TOPICS
Symbolism, Science, First thing first, Me inside the body, State and condition, Symbolism of the tail, Purpose of making love, Night fears, The id, The heart, Heart and the psyche, Solar plexus, Heartbreak, Eternity, God and existence, Resentment and jealousy, Lust, Difference between sex and love
SUMMARY
The talk begins by stripping away escape routes: there is no 'other life'. Circumstances surround like the zodiac; align with them and act. When you have done all you can, rest rather than think. Barry re-reads Genesis as instruction, not history: the Sabbath is whenever doing ends; holiness appears as rest. God, not fixed belief, is ever-moving intelligence; responsibility for God is individual—not deferred to prophets or masters. In this light, scientific triumphs that ignore love lack meaning. Real work is to face what disturbs, breathe into stillness, and be here.
He leads the room into the inner reality of being—no object, no subject—then back out, keeping the inner anchored while moving in the world. Mind becomes awareness; death is the cessation of senses, not the end of life. A series of images clarifies the snag-points: the tail of the past that wags the head; the Id whose suppression breeds nightmares and violence; lovemaking that should make stillness rather than fantasy; the broken organic heart as sacrifice that opens the cosmic heart. Throughout, the measure of truth is whether it serves love between man and woman and the earth we serve.
10 - Ego as armour: protecting the wrong thing
