Ten Lessons From Adyashanti’s “Falling into Grace: Insights on the End of Suffering”
2 min readDec 15, 2023
- You are not your ideas about yourself. You are not the ideas that other people have about you.
- The more that you try to control everything, the more out of control you feel. The more out of control you feel, the more you try to control everything.
- By letting go of who you think you are, you return to who you are. But you have to be open to the unknown.
- When someone talks about you, they are talking about their state of consciousness.
- As you seek out the truth, you have to be willing to give up your ideas about the truth. All too often, your thoughts have made you complacent. You have grown used to them, even when they make you suffer. You feel threatened when they are challenged by others. Your ego desperately clings to your ideas and does not want to let them go. You are resistant to the uncertainty of existence.
- When you try to force yourself to feel a certain way, such as peaceful and happy, you are creating a conflict within yourself. Because you are seeking what you are not, your intention turns into an egoic struggle for a reward. You are trying to capture an abstract idea of peace and happiness, but peace and happiness are not mere ideas. Look at the intimacy of your experience.
- Your thoughts are not ultimate reality. They are symbols. They are references to other thoughts. You come to identify with certain stories and become attached to them. You decide what is meaningful or meaningless, relevant or irrelevant. Who are you beyond your ideas?
- You suffer when you are not fully present. Rather than being with what is, you are resisting what was and is and could be.
- You may have been taught to block out or fight against your emotions. But you can’t ignore them forever. Wherever you go, there they are. Without judgment, be aware of what is happening within you.
- When you open your heart, you will be heartbroken. But rather than retreating or acting out, love even more. Life is full of so much suffering that you cannot control. Life is indescribably beautiful as well. Just by being compassionate and present, you can lessen the suffering of those around you. You can tend to this world.
