It’s not about the Journey, it’s about the Destination.
When you find the Truth, you solve problems once and for all.
1.1. Most people's destination is the prescription:
You aren't looking for treatments, you're looking for a cure, there is a destination. It isn't about spending the next 90 years getting assaulted, and then feeling better, getting assaulted and putting Tiger Balm on it. It's not about journeys, it's about destinations. Now, destinations, require journeys. But everything that you do in your life is defined by the destination. Journey is the thing that you're actually on, that's where you are right now. But if you don't get to a destination, you've sort of wasted your time.
If there was no destination, no one would begin any journey. If there was no compulsion to arrive anywhere, nobody wouldn't begin any kind of journey at all. It is just that most people's destination is the prescription, wearing the orange-colored robe and then sitting in front of the incense and having the self-image that I'm a yogi and that I am meditating and I'm doing all the spiritual things. And that becomes a destination in itself that I have achieved that self-image where I view myself that way.
1.2. What is a worthy destination?
There is no worthy. It is not about enforcing rules. There are no rules. Rules are to be avoided at all costs if one is sincere because wherever there's a rule, there's insincerity. It's like stoicism, it's a rule, it can't go anywhere. It's more self-image creation.
1.3. How do you know if it is Truth?
You know something is true when it feels true, you know it when you hear it even if you don't like it. When you hear the truth, the inner sensation that you get is beyond the intellect. You’ll feel it in the gut as soon as it is said and you’ll have a hard time intellectually framing and understanding it and that is a very good sign that something is true. We process things with intelligence, however, that’s a very limited domain. So when something cuts straight through that into an essence of something within our core for which we have receptors and they seem to grasp and then it’s a good sign of truth.
Another definition is that truth is that it has predictive power. The more true it is, you can use it to predict the future more accurately. When you hear the truth, sometimes it leaves you in silence and other times it creates an emotional response especially if it is aimed at your ego/identity.
1.4. How to solve problems once and for all?
Everything begins with the truth. What is the truth? The truth is that human beings have problems. That's the truth. He has specific problems, some problems that are more acute for him than for his neighbor. His most acute problems are his living reality. They are not abstract, they're not spiritual, they are in his face, and he lives in that every single day. The first step is to understand that all problems can be solved forever. That is where to begin.
One way to know that you are finding truth is that problem is solved for good. You don’t have to revisit the same problem again. Both your internal/external state improve/change. The more they change internally, the quieter it gets. And externally life is less complicated. When you have to revisit an internal problem again and again to solve, the solution was largely a matter of luck. If you solve the problem twice in a row, then there is a system in place. You’ve figured out something that nobody else knows.
There are real problems that everybody faces. And if you have a genuine desire to solve these problems once and for all, the way to do them is not to follow some routine or build up some image of the person who solves problems. It's to examine them for the truth, no matter how unpopular or how transmissible or unexplainable it might be. And if you look for the truth, and you find that you will know you found that when you solve the problem.
1.5. How to arrive at the destination?
If that human is exposed to the truth on a regular basis, his ears don't even have to hear it consciously, something inside of him will internalize that truth. And that will become a new norm, a human being becomes his environment. And that is why it's absolutely critical to savagely and surgically arrange one's environment in a way that is in accordance with where one wants to go. If a person is exposed to truth on a regular basis, and not prescription, it has got to be straight truth, then that becomes his norm. That becomes the way that he thinks his brain begins to rewire itself. It all depends upon the input, it is all about one thing and one thing only exposure, you become that which you are most consistently exposed to.
In a modern context, the people who are very interested in truth and in conquering the mind and internal freedom, tend to coalesce on reading the same books, thinking about the same things. Listen to the same podcast, talk to the same people. And even though prescriptions don't work, no book is going to make you conquer the mind. And listening to any podcast is not going to give you internal freedom. Eventually, at some point, it does soak in, you're attracted to what you want to be. And as you immerse yourself in it, you have no choice. But to become that over time.
The shoulds and shouldn’ts are pure poison. Your greatest weapon is the understanding and the awareness of where it's going, not watching your thoughts, like a mechanical automaton. It is just the understanding that you know where the mind is going and that you do see yourself doing this, that site itself has already poked a hole in that behavior. Freedom comes from the understanding of where things come from, not the conscious attempt to end them.
1.6. The question is where do you want to go?
Everyone dives into the prescription. Everyone's impetus for entering the game is the should and the good and the bad. The impetus should be where do you want to go? Because that answer will create your own path.
1.7. How to attain Freedom?
If someone truly wants freedom, then the truth behind that is freedom from the mind, the idea of trying to understand the mind with the mind that's intellectual, it's irrelevant. there is a capacity to understand. The understanding will come from a certain place. It's almost like sincerity and genuineness and the seriousness creates its own Oregon. So freedom comes from the understanding of where things come from, not the conscious attempt to end them.
Looking for progress is essentially looking for pleasure. It is the pleasure of self image which says I'm in a better place now than I was before. And that's why I get excited when I get some progress. Truth is the understanding that the pursuit of all things and human beings life are motivated by pleasure. Nothing wrong with it at all.
1.8. Is it effective if you're trying to get to freedom?
No, it's a different path. And it isn't a wrong one. Pleasure. You will always be on the lookout for when the ship will come in. As long as one is always on the lookout for when the ship will come in, attention will necessarily be on the horizon. You are creating an image around this person who is getting better. That traps you in that self-image. When you are thinking about experiencing that pleasure, there are always setbacks. If you get angry/sad suddenly that pleasure gets withdrawn and that makes you unfree. You are trapped in this pleasure game. This is just a game of the mind. No technique of the mind will free you from the mind. That’s why freedom is really beyond the mind.
Up Next: Truth about Living in the Moment
Reference:
Summary of the podcast “Conquering the Mind“, a conversation between Naval and Kapil Gupta.
Image inspired by GoLimitless