Our worst enemy is inside us – and so is our best friend – Analyze, Confront, Empower

[Talk at Concordia University, Montreal, Canada]

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This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
by how we respond to it. I spoke on this topic of our best friend is within us, and our enemy is also within us, we talked about the acronym ACE, how to ACE our inner world, three points were, what are the three points? Analyze, confront, empower, yeah, it is there, I know that, so analyze means sometimes we shock ourselves by the way we speak or the way we act, what’s going on, I didn’t think I was so bad, what am I doing, it’s not that we are so bad, but that kind of bad forces are there within us, and sometimes we surprise ourselves, how did I speak that, how did I draw that, how did I do that, where did the idea come from, so actually there are four, our inner world is like a battleground for forces bigger than us, both the forces of light and the forces of darkness, so to understand the inner world is a model given by the yoga texts, that is there is a dark side within us which can be called as the mind, the bright side within us is the intelligence, and the intelligence is connected with the ultimate bright side that is divinity within us, and mind is connected with the, mind is the reservoir of the dark impressions within us, which can accumulate, so if we just face the world unaware of the complexity of our inner world, then we will be ambushed, because we expect our best side to appear, and the worst side appears at that time, we don’t know what to do, but if we confront, that means we understand that the dark side within us, it’s like a snowball, right now it might be a snow pebble, but it can become a snowball and a snow boulder and can ruin me, so think, contemplating how our weaknesses if attended can break our lives, can bring some sobriety, some gravity, like a patient has to understand the gravity of a cancer, so that they can take up the treatment, even if it is a little difficult, so then we also confront in terms of what all abilities we have and what contribution we can make through abilities, so our and that’s where we talk about empower, empower means our spirituality can increase our ability to tap our ability, so we need empowerment in the sense that our dark side it needs to be sidelined and our bright side it needs to be, it needs to be brought into the center stage, so for doing this we talked about ABC, what was A? Association, I talked about how desires are not just linear, but also triangular, so if you associate with those who are trying to develop their bright side, our bright side will also develop, but if we, but by default in today’s culture and today’s media, largely people who are giving into their dark side, that’s the kind of people we see around us, so we need to be cautious, B was? Books, yeah, so reading wisdom text helps us understand the complexity and the dynamics of our world and ensures that we don’t get ambushed, that we learn to understand ourselves and empower our higher side and C was? Chanting, chanting of mantras, so there I talked about how the mantras can redirect our conscious, their spiritual power packed, concentrated in sound and by the utterance of mantras, we can reorient our consciousness in a positive direction, so then I conclude by talking about anchors, that the waves of the dark side within us will hit us, we can’t fight them on our own, but if we connect with and we discover our anchor and learn to hold on to that anchor, then our capacity to resist will increase manifold and when we feel helpless that there are so many things wrong in our life, we are not, no matter how bad things are, we can always make them worse, so we are not as powerless as we think, we are not as powerless, that means we can make them better also, so if we give in to our dark side, our life will be a series of misadventures, but when we learn to become a conductor, not an insulator for the divinity within us, then discovering how good can, how much good we can do, that can make our life into an adventure, thank you very much.
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