Beyond the Human Condition: The Sacrifice of Self
This is the 2nd recording in a series of 11 from from a 5 day meeting on the Gold Coast, originally recorded in Australia in May 1998—over 25 years ago. Recently, this recording was digitally remastered to enhance its clarity and quality.
In this talk Barry explores the profound question of why humans suffer, delving into the intricacies of human emotions and the illusions that perpetuate suffering. He challenges narratives that trap individuals in cycles of pain and suffering, pointing to the deep-seated human propensity for attachment – our tendency to cling to what causes us pain. Barry says that by moving beyond emotional suffering and embracing the stillness of being individuals can uncover a life of profound liberation and peace – this is the sacrifice of the self – and the next step in our evolution.
LANGUAGE: English
YEAR RECORDED: 1998
PLACE RECORDED: Gold Coast, Australia
DURATION: 59 minutes
EPISODE NOTES
Extracts from this episode:
'So I ask you, will you make the great sacrifice – the great self sacrifice? ... let me tell you what self sacrifice is. I give up my moodiness. I don't have to display it to anyone and get knighted or something for it. I have to do it in this body, in this space without any positive demonstration of what I'm doing, because if I give up my moodiness, I give up the positive demonstration of moodiness, and then what am I? Well, I'm not moody. And who's going to notice that? Well, some people might notice that he or she is never moody. Isn't that en-lightening?'
'Do you want this life to go on, up and down, up and down? You meet a new man or a woman. You're all up here. You make beautiful love, isn't it wonderful? Then a month later, bang, what's happened to our love? What have we done? Why are we growing apart? Why? – Because of ignorance. Simply, ignorance. Why does the love that you first have – why does it have to go stale? You know how beautiful is when you first meet, when your bodies are first together, making love, it's wonderful, it's glorious, you want it to go on forever – well, that's true, because that's the body's making love. But as soon as the human comes into making love, love goes out the window, all those thoughts, all those judgments of the other, all those self doubts, the moodiness comes up, the opinions come up, and an emotion comes between us that we cannot see except that we can feel, and we despair of that drives us apart, and we say to each other, 'what's happened to us?,' 'where is all the love we had?''
'Every one of us that's born has to pick up some of the ignorance that we, through our ignorance of love and life and truth and the things I'm talking about – each one of us, each newborn baby – must pick up that ignorance and have to live it out, to endeavor to get rid of this terrible humanness that we have inside of us, of unhappiness, of emotion, of sorrow, of grief, and all the rest of it – because that's the next stage of human evolution, and that's what I am here for, and that's why so very few people hear me.'
Love and Growing Old