Our work is based an being able to absorb the atmosphere in which we live, and basically a strong life makes for a very strong energy, and it makes for strong tensions. These tensions when they're taking inside, consciously and in a state of surrender, and when we are not fighting the situation which brings about the tensions but accepting it really brings it very deeply within us.

Because it's a heavy energy, tension, pain, all of these things are very heavy energies, so instead of just going into us, they really go very deep into us. Just as they do in some desert areas where they're trying to plant grass, they put the grass seed in little pellets in clay. When the seeds are thrown out of the plane it really digs very deeply into the earth and so it can grow and hold the soil. For the same reason, when we surrender deeply, and open and absorb tension and pain, we really are, digging into our unconscious. We're using our energy to dig into this unconsciousness and to really free this material and spiritual wealth, which is an eternal condition that is available for you.

It's very much against the nature of people because we always try to live without feeling, without any kind of pain, and it really is our ignorance. It is our simplicity; it's our stupidity; it is really our lack of development, which only allows us to attract situations, which become difficult. And then we all have the experience where we meet somebody and we got involved, and we go for six months or a year or whatever, and then we finally understand where we were wrong, and we see them differently. It isn't so much that we see them differently; it is that they represented something, which we needed. We needed the connections to take that particular energy. Once we've used that energy and we've grown above the situation, we haven't the capacity to really bring the other person and the situation to a higher level and so we begin to see them as they are, or as they were in the beginning. We have used somebody consciously and because we use a situation consciously, we should consciously raise the person in the situation to the higher level that we're going so that they can serve us again and again.

But it's really within the nature of people to find ways of rejecting, because there isn't within the life of another human being the capacity to reinvest in another human being. We always look and feel disappointed. We feel rejected. We feel a million things which again represent throwing energy into something which isn't, and why analyze something which has no existence?

You say, "This person is incapable of doing this," or "They're always ripping me off," or all these other things that we use as expressions of negative quantity, or, in a sense the hole in the person, and we continually pour our energy into these voids instead of trying to bring about some kind of other connection to raise the person and make them vital. You can't bring vitality to anything except nourishment, and we have to try to sustain them within ourselves.

I'm trying very much because of my own nature to really change the level of my being, the level of my spiritual work and the level of my life. I mean exactly that, not one level, but many, many levels simultaneously. Because the nature of creation is that if we have multiple levels of capacity, that when one for some reason is not functioning, then we can really use consciously this creative energy that we have and develop another talent or another function. This mechanism can work completely. Our life energy is used consciously twenty-four hours a day because this may not be working or this may not be working that is working.

And within us we always focus on what isn't functioning instead of seeing how we can consciously use energy at a particular moment in an area, which is a functioning area with ourselves, or an area in which we have capacity. We are busy not using our capacity because we're questioning this lack of capacity in two or three other places, and at the same time not really taking the alternative which in possible us.

It's only a fool who continually finds rejection and an intelligent human being who looks for the alternative. When one, two and three grows, and then four is available. If four, three two croaks, then one is available. Sometimes you can have of one working and half of three working.

And it's the inherent combinations of capacities and alternatives and dimensions, which are in existence always. And we only find them when we begin to find that a thing that we look towards doesn't function instead of commiserating and whining and moaning and screaming about that, we switch over to the things, which we can do.

It's called common sense, and common sense is a quality of a human being. And this is where we fail enormously because we always think that we have common sense. Common sense is the rational thing to do.

Unfortunately we always over praise our condition. People are not rational people, are not normal, and certainly the people who do not have the capacity to detach from one thing and go to another afterwards. And when we stop trying to give ourselves values, which are the values, which we set up for people, for ordinary human beings will we come closer to the truth about situations.

This madness, this incapacity to function freely is really more than anything else, the expression of the human race. When we begin to understand that, we begin to allow ourselves to see the need that exists within us to consciously make efforts that we will not make rationally. A rational effort has to do with a free human being. And until you are free, until you have within your sense of being, this freedom, the ability to go to the right or to the left or go front wards or back wards or up or down. You really have to understand; you do not qualify for all of these labels, which are the labels of a free human being.

You have to stop thinking of yourself as being a rational person. You have to stop thinking of yourself as someone who has control. I watch day by day, and this is after a lifetime of very intense work, and I watch when a lot of money comes in, the whole incentive drop dead.

I watch these things in me that are completely at the whim of need. I work under pressure, and we all work under pressure. I have to sit down and talk to myself and consciously get me moving because there is no outer pressure motivating me.

I'm grateful that I don't have this insane drive that some people do trying to pile up vast amounts of money. I really have to work consciously. I find that I have to identify emotionally and consciously that I don't just go this way and I don't just go that way,

I really am grateful because twenty years ago I found myself like a seed blowing on the wind any way the wind blew I went, and I remember this very, very distinctly, it was one of my great wishes, one of the things that I asked for endlessly inside that I'd be delivered from this possession of energy and emotion which was beyond my control. I don't forget these things. I tried to stay detached because of the effort that it takes for me, or the effort that it took for me to get as far as I've gotten.

We all have to come within ourselves to a rational thing, which is to understand our madness, our imbalances, our lack of control among many other things. And it's a terrible thing and so many people suffer abysmally because they think everyone else is in control and they are out of control. They are cursed, and they have to work harder and deeper and it comes easy for somebody else. That's a lot of shit.

There is nobody in this world that doesn't have a balance that they are working at a tremendous depth. They have always something, which is haunting them. They always have a million things, which they have to work at consciously. It's an unfortunate condition of this earth that nobody is honest enough to talk up front and really express their situation.

There is never a time during spiritual work and development when you're raised in one level and going to another that you don't live like a madman. There is always this kind of condition because a very strong and violent energy is breaking out of you as you are locked inside yourself. Through your energy you're free to see this is your state. And these passive people who could kill everyone; these things exist tremendously.

Somebody has an enormous need to be successful, to be in control, to be a teacher, all of these thousands and thousands and thousands of things exist in a various assortment in every human being. A great timidity and underneath it is a tremendous violence or really a violence that may not be towards people in general but it might be directed towards parents. All of these things exist within people and it's important that we not recognize it because we can't afford to allow ourselves to see how our condition actually is.

We can become honest and really understand it, and really face it, and realize that we're working to get control of these things, and we're working to transcend them, and we can be open and be grateful to the people that we love who we are using at this particular moment to feed us, and give us the security to transcend these different parts of ourselves.

We have a chance not only for realization, but also for realization on a very, very, very high level. Otherwise you will have a realization, but it'll be a realization of a pygmy and a moron. And there are people who do that. They crystallize and in their crystallization they freeze everything which is a limitation, and which we would call a negative quality or a negative quantity. They never burn them out. They never utilize the energy that's locked in to grow further. And growth should be infinite because we have within ourselves so many of these characteristics, so much that may be acceptable to somebody else but something which can be refined and refined and refined until we look at ourselves and realize that we have the sensitivity of a goat in heat of three years ago and now we can function like possibly a well trained dog.

And slowly but surely we find ourselves growing and growing and growing and growing. But the need to think of oneself as being pure is a kind of ego, which is outrageous. If you have any idea of the thickness of a human being, of the molecular density of a human being against this infinite energy that flows through the atmosphere, which is called the Atman or the spiritual force, it would frighten you to a point that would make it impossible for you to work. But we live in a state of grace. God is an extraordinary and good energy so that you live in an atmosphere that is just very possible for you and that allows you to move to the next level.

And we are structured in such a way that we have always the ability to rise to another level and another level and another level. It's an infinite amount of work, and it comes from an infinite grace that life is so structured. Only when you got there can you visualize and think of that and go on and on and on and on. And it's the endlessness, the ability to live this way that finally allows you to stretch and love and love and love everything and everybody, to really include within yourself the entire universe.

All of these concepts are very real concepts, but you can't begin to believe how tremendous some of these things are, and I certainly don't claim to be enlightened, and I certainly don't claim anything, I just am a million times further than I was a few years ago. I know when I sit down and look at you my heart breaks and opens because I really love you. I really have tremendous feeling and it really rises in me and I look from one to the other and so much of me responds. I feel it only in a positive way. Because I really understand your need, I really understand how some of you can't open; you can't afford to do more than you're doing in this particular moment.

I try to kick you a little bit and I try to love you a lot, to give you the nourishment to open when some of you don't have the guts, some of you don't have a pattern structurally which allows for more than what is there at that particular minute. But this is your acceptable limitation because if you really work and give the exercise as it is given simply and really feel the energy and the nourishment in your organs; these organs will grow strong.

It's just a question of feeding muscles. All of this horseshit of spiritual work is nothing more than millions of muscles which are taking in nourishment and growing, and as they grow they manifest. Everything in life manifests. Everything shows the level of this existence. As we get to a level of spirituality, this is a rich level, it shows these images and these paintings which are extraordinary, and slowly but surely you get above that into a richer color and energy sense and less of a manifestation of figures and more of a manifestation of color.

You really get into a more and more ratified atmosphere and slowly you become free. But your struggle, this struggle within you is really only feeding energy, feeding muscles and the tensions, and the pain that these muscles go through as they open.

It is simple. We have a very, very simple work. That energy manifests is the problem, and so we can imagine a lot. We can visualize a lot. We can sense a lot and the less mind we use, the less emotions we use, the more capable we become of taking in energy and allowing ourselves to accept ourselves simply. But it's the tensions that we make and the limitations that we put upon ourselves which really are the problem. Because there is no limitation and finally as you grow more, you can really take in this pain and these muscles and bones expand in you.

These pains only represent growth and you can drink them in and have your heart open simultaneously, that you can really take in this pain as energy with your attitude and then you have a chance to make a great leap and this leap really allow you to burn faster, take in faster and give off more.

It really has to be always understood by all of you that what you can't surrender, if you can't work properly, you must completely accept that this limitation is only a stubbornness and a resistance in you and you have to talk to yourself and really fight you. You're letting something gain control of you because you're lazy or stupid, and it's the simplest thing, and there's no excuse for ignorance, and there is no excuse for anything because doing, working, just taking a breath you're eating through the tensions that keep you from making this effort.

And there's nothing in the world but doing this for a half hour once or twice a day and trying in your ordinary relationships with people to just internalize the situation, not to identify and talk and talk and talk, but to drink in and feel the flow of between you and another human being. That you are grateful that you are using your energy in a positive and simple way and you're not getting tense and tight and excited and a million other things.

QUESTION: Sunday I came to the party and I was like a. stone, and I was working all day-- it's been a constant condition lately of working and working and working and I just can't break through and I've been wondering am I working right?

RUDI: No, you're coming to a shell. When you start to feel like a stone, when you feel that thickness, then it means you're really taking a shell which you have already lived on the outside of and you're really working to the inside so that the nourishment within you is rising and expanding, and the shell has to break away, So you're feeling the shell and it's a thick shell.

QUESTION: Is there anything I can do to work better?

RUDI: You have to be grateful that you feel the shell most people live above that, they live in a world of illusion. This shell is very real. The same way, some of you will work a few months and you feel a band around your head, it's like an one-inch band of iron or an one-inch band of steel, and this is nothing except that you have removed some of the surface. It's like the one-inch of shit or snow or whatever above this that you wear in the world that protects you.

People walk around "Oh. I', whatever and blah, blah, blah" and you look behind them and there's a total disaster. Everything they go near they destroy. Everyone they touch they give bad advice, everything they do is terrible, and so they work for six months and then they finally just melt away this external mass. This external surface starts to go and they really begin to understand that they're an uptight person. And they feel this band around here and that usually takes six months to a year to break this real band of tension that we live with. We can't afford to realize what our condition actually is. It's so bad that we can't begin to realize that only after working in a positive way do we begin to see that we have a lock on our heart and a band of tension around our head and what feels like a bar of steel on our shoulders, and these things go away as we come out of this prison that we have built and we can't built has an existence.

So what you're feeling is very real and you should be grateful for it, very deeply grateful because from that grace so long of a poison that is around that is around that particular person's brain and you begin to breathe differently, your skin will change, that's one of the first things that takes place after that.

QUESTION: I'm breaking out more.

RUDI: Yes, but it's really the poison coming through.

QUESTION About this band of tension, what's maintaining the tension, I mean, it exists and yet

RUDI: It has existed for thousands of years.

QUESTION: But what is maintaining it?

RUDI: Exactly what you're doing is what maintains it, trying to think about it.

QUESTION: But even if I don't think about it I feel it anyway.

RUDI: So feel it, but don't feed it. When you think about it you're feeding it. You just surrender it and you dissolve it. This band of tension that you're coming to is a gift, it is an achievement, and you say, "Thank God I've come to that level that will dissolve it, and you slowly absorb that tension inside in your growth and one day it will be gone.

So this is what we're wrapped in this life like it's a Christmas package. It's like putting twenty or thirty years of shit in a container, in a container where you can't smell it and you paint it with stars and sprinkle it and put a couple of cherries over here and saying, "What a great Christmas present", and you start here and you break it open. And as it begins to break open and we see all of this thing, and we say, "This is the reward for working?" -- Of course it's the reward for working. Why do you want this stuff that eats into your kidneys, and eats into your heart, and eats into your mind, and eats into every organ in your body. It has to stink as you begin to clean up this mess that you call you.

And we don't want to pay. We always get to a point where we improve a little bit and then somebody loves us because they see that we have grown spiritually and this thing goes "Cloink" and closes and you're walking and holding hands with something which in closed for twenty-three years, and you're closed for twenty-five years. That's a perfect marriage, and then what do you do, you give birth to some poor thing that comes through you through this trash heap this accumulated cosmic mulch pile and then you are really breathing through this terrible thing that has existed in you forever.

And this is what we're cursed with. I couldn't understand in myself so much of this and very fortunately I was with the Shankaracharya and I said to him, "Why?"-- I only asked him one question once about growing. He said, "What do you want?" and I said, "Well. I want to grow, and I want to suffer and I want to grow." He said, that's not right, you want to grow and you want to be happy. So I finally said, "Yes, I want to grow and I want to be happy" and he said you're going to suffer like a jackass for twenty-five more years. I started to laugh and I said, "Well, why?" He said because of the way you were conceived. He said, "You were conceived in a tremendous hatred, that you mother and father hated each other violently, and so your soul is locked in this tension." And I really began to understand and it's not their fault, I mean it's nobody's fault. This is your karma and you get this as your ball game. You either play the game and break through it and clean it up or you don't. It's not going to change. Hating them is going to perpetuate it, just like the bands on your head.

If you're thinking about it, you keep making that kind of poison. You accept this, and you surrender it and you become grateful that you can at least know what is wrong, until you have a diagnosis, until you have a consciousness that you can take care of. It is the ignorance of our situation that makes us the prisoner; it's our ability to grow inside that takes away and it breaks these bonds and really frees us. Nobody did it to you, whatever it was, they spun the wheel and it came out number 6002XYZ, and you got this kind of a selection, but within you is also the ability to cope with it. That shit and poison that you were born through, those tensions and those problems that you were born through are exactly the chemical components, when you grind them down that make the particular fertilizer that nourishes you as the kind of a plant that you are. And this is the perfection of our life. We take all of the quantities and all of the negativities and all of the possitivities and you grind it down and you put one teaspoon of that in a glass of water and drink it, you'd be a free human being.

All of this stuff that you call your karma is exactly what you need to grow free, and so we live our karma and we never dissolve it and so we don't become free, we become this tree or whatever it is that we think this life is about. That's the bull that we get loaded on when we talk about spirituality and the path. The path is willing to accept all this crap. But real spirituality is to dissolve it, to completely grind it out, become free and then become a human being. Why live with this limitation. It's ridiculous. It's acceptable because we really want to go through drama. We really take ourselves to that degree that we're willing to spend our whole life fighting this or fighting that. It's crazy. It's really crazy. Karma is the accepted imprisonment of a human being by himself. It's how much shit life can drop on you that you find just possibly bearable and you're willing to survive with that load. It doesn't make sense at all.

Consciousness is finishing up that karma in as short a time as possible and being a free human being, not to have it as your guideline, but to have as something which you can take care of as soon as possible, and then as a free person be able to choose spiritually what you want, be able to open and relate to who you wish, and to allow them the freedom to grow and really feel within you. And all of these things that we think about, the things we react to are really karmic situations, and of course, karmic limitations.