to most of us life seems like a constant battle a constant struggle to either attain something that we desire or to fend off things to get away from things that we do not desire that we want to avoid in life but by the end of this video I want to hopefully have convinced you that all this struggling all this fighting all this battling and all this push and pull that we feel of things that we want and things that we want to avoid is really largely if not completely self Afflicted and can be stopped within
a moment and I know this is a concept that seems really radical but in essence and that's another thing I hope to show you is that it's also extremely simple and that the only thing that keeps people and that most people come in contact with it throughout their lives but what keeps them from seeing it understanding it belie leaving it and applying it is a very simple but fundamental misunderstanding of the entire concept and to convince you of this fact I'm going to get some help from multiple people one of them being Meister ekart or
Master eart he was a uh German um well here I I'll read you more commonly known as m akart was born near gotha in Eastern Germany in around 1260 he had an illustrious career in the Dominican order holding senior ecclesiastical and teaching posts all over Europe including sexy Bohemia Paris Strasburg and cologne eart is one of the great speculative Mystics of Western Europe who sought to reconcile traditional Christian belief with the transcendental metaphysics of neop neoplatonism so he was very much a big Christian figure a SC a scholar a preacher and he has very interesting
ideas and insights about the human intellect and how we suffer through it and how we're how we can also be saved by it and he Likens the human intellect to God's intellect who is the intellect of intellect and how we become can become like God if only we apply this god-given gift this potential that we have it's like senaka says we are born for virtue but we are not born with virtue we need to acquire it ourselves and master eart is just um like we said he's a Mystic so like most other Mystics both in
the Christian as well in the Muslim tradition uh they're very poetic they're very eloquent and they're very emotional and get to the point in that way rather than a purely academic or Scholastic way you could say and right on page 59 of this penguin edition of some of his work he says now I say further that all suffering comes from our love for what Misfortune takes from us if the loss of external things causes me pain then this is a clear sign that I love external things and thus in truth love suffering and despair is
it surprising then that I suffer since I love and seek suffering and despair and that's really the heart of the matter and just like I've called in the help of master echart master eart calls in the help of another friend of ours Sena he says Sena a pagan Master asks what is the best consolation in suffering and distress and gives this answer it is this that we should accept everything as if we had desired it and prayed for it for you would have desired it if you had known that all things happen from with and
in the will of God another Pagan Master says Lord Supreme father Master of the highest Heavens I am ready for all that you will give me the will to will what you will and here we have it and this is what all helenistic philosophy what the Ancients talk about what Christianity talks about what Islam talks about what Buddhism talks about what the bakat Gita talks about and many other philosophers schools of thought religions and philosophies whoever they are if they are in search in an open-minded and objective way of meaning then they all come to
the same conclusions and you see someone like master eart who lived in the 13th century referencing Sena who in his own words was a pagan Someone who lived before Christianity yet he finds the same thought and he believes in the same thought and what is this thought we often say in our other videos which are much more based on people like senica than than Christians such as master eart that when we do not act indifferently to indifferent things when we love externals when we depend on externals and not on internals when we try to control
what by Nature cannot be controlled that's when we find distress anxiety fear anger and everything else that we commonly experience in our daily lives that we want to get away from but again what does senica say he says if you knew that God willed it you would have willed it too everything that fortune throws at you what we tend to do is when externals such as say a job loss say a fire in your house say someone gets sick say your dog runs away it doesn't matter what it is when these things happen to us
we immediately label them as either good or bad and when we do label them as bad we think we're in a bad way and that we need to now fight against these things that we need to fight to preserve something or fight to keep something away but that is the same thing in essence as trying to stand up to something to fight something that by its nature is invincible and not possible to fight not possible to overcome think of it in physical terms if you were at a beach and the water's nice and calm but
all of a sudden you see a 40ft wave come toward you you would not try to fight that wave you would try to get out of its way if anything you would not stand up against it you would not try to win over it you would not try to defeat it yet when it comes to things like death disease or even smaller things such as Financial loss Financial ruin even even if you will any of our possessions being damaged or destroyed we think we can prevent that by fighting against it we think we can win
over that and especially with things like death we think well if we never think about it if we act like it doesn't exist then that's us fighting against it maybe that way we can win over it but no as as epitus says to learn how to live is to learn how to die meaning we should not try to forget about death we should not try to ignore it we should not try to not think about it and act like it doesn't exist quite the opposite we should study it if we would study how to die
we would essentially study how to live because to study how to die well is to study how to live well and look at all those people who do not surrender and when I say surrender I know there are lot of connotations attached to that and this is exactly the misunderstanding I was speaking of when we say that we should surrender we always have this idea of it being an act of weakness and not an act of strength at all but quite the opposite I want to convince you that surrendering that to will what God Wills
what Fortune Wills what happens to us to want what is happening to us instead of trying to fight it is surrendering and it's an act of strength not an act of weakness rather look at it this way all those people that we sometimes hear about who end their lives because because something they've experienced terrible Financial loss or their loved ones left them even sometimes if it's a short relationship they say how can I go on living even though they don't realize they've been living quite well up to that point before they met that person and
when they're in their lives we say we wish you could have adapted we say we wish you could have realized that this is not that big of a deal that you could have learned to live and that you would have come back from this and that nothing that can happen to you is as big as you make it out to be this fight this trouble this battle you make it out to be and we say I wish I could have been there to show you that but I didn't know I wasn't there sometimes we hear
of these people right so that if anything is weakness but to say no I will overcome this I will learn to want what is happening to me and I will learn to live with it I will learn to even like it and to draw Advantage from it because we talked about earlier in every disadvantage there's an advantage and in every Advantage there's a disadvantage but again when we Face these so-called bad things negative things in our lives if we learn to not only accept it but to love it to see it as something that is
happening to us and that we should not just wish to be over and done with it but that we can draw an experience from it a lesson from it an advantage from it and to become better through it what what better thing is there I forget who said this now but the the quote goes something like this I step on to my Misfortune and as a result I stand taller and that's that's exactly what it is life throws us all kinds of things we are the ones that label them as good or bad but what
if we labeled even the so-called bad things as good things because we've learned how to turn them into our advantage what if we could become better through all the so-called good things and also through all the so-called bad things wouldn't life be not only infinitely be worth more living but also would it not be a much better life even though we're so-called surrendering to these things even though we're so-called submitting to them if you try to fight something as big as a depression an econ economical downturn and your financial loss or if you try to
find fight disease illness death in yourself or in others you will lose that battle and you will break yourself but if you are more bending more flexible if you adapt to the will of Fortune if you will to will what God Wills what life Wills what the universe Wills the word does the word God doesn't matter you can replace it with the universe or or life or whatever you want but if you learn learn how to do this your suffering will stop immediately and everything will become easier and another thing is realize that every time
you're battling something every time you're fighting something you wish to be out of that situation as quickly as possible a battle a fight a struggle is not something we want to be in so we always look for the future for release for relief but not only will that future never come because with that mentality there was always there will always be a battle battle there will always be a fight there will always something so-called negative and bad happening in your life and another fact is that we only inhabit the Pres the present the the future
is not here yet and the past is gone so it's just a simple fact that we're only Moment by moment living in those very moments and anyone who battles or fights or is in the middle of a war cannot inhabit the present because they don't want to be in the present they want to do what they need to do get over their struggle and live a happy life afterwards maybe but they never get there and that's another thing that surrendering allows you when you try this in in every situation from now on that you think
is a bad situation that you think is a a negative situation try this just accept the situation as what it needs to be in fact want what is happening to you currently if you start doing that you will look around for opportunities to advance yourself instead of for opportunities to exit it this could be as simple as going to the DMV and and having to wait in line for hours it's a perfect example even though it's very small of course when we wait in a line like that we just want to get do what we're
there to do get it over with as quickly as possible and we're agitated the whole time through we never stop to think and look around but if you accept the situation if you say the line is what it is it's bigger than I am if I fight something that is bigger than I am I will lose but ironically it seems if I surrender to what is bigger than I am to what is stronger than I am then I win because I start inhabiting the only place in life that I could possibly inhabit and that's the
present that's the now so when I Surrender when I accept the situation when I even want the situation to occur exactly as it is occurring right this instant then all of a sudden I inhabit the present I inhabit the room that I am that I'm in I look around I see things I see opportunities maybe I can relieve someone else's stress maybe I can put a smile on my face and and make someone else realize this is not that big of a deal that we waste Moment by moment the only moment that we have look
around for opportunities want what you're going through because if you start want wanting what you're going through you start living and as long as you're fighting battling and hating your current situation the current place you're in then you're not living and if you never start living you will nevertheless die without ever having lived all right so these are just couple of things I would like you to think about it's one of the biggest keys to happiness and it's also one of the biggest keys to understanding every thought every school of thought that has ever existed
in including religions philosophies everyone who is after in terms of again a school of thought or religion everyone who is after the truth in an objective and open-minded Way Comes to these ideas and that's why we call them Universal and Timeless and we find them everywhere so I I would recommend you to read read Master eart if you sort of want to dive into that if you're a Christian certainly you should but even if you're not maybe you want to see how these Timeless and Universal ideas regardless of religion regardless of school of thought regardless
of who the person is if they are that kind of person who is looking for meaning in life nevertheless comes to the same ideas it's very interesting all right and then I also have a little bit of an announcement for those who are still watching at the end of this video um I thought it'd be maybe fun to do a live stream um answer some questions just just have a chat live and um in that live stream I think I'm also going to have an announcement or two for you about the the future of the
work we want to do here of the work that we can do here possibly and that um some maybe bigger things are coming and uh it also just give me an opportunity to or us an opportunity to reflect together of the sort of Journey we've been on right um a lot of people have joined I'm sort of I'm a little bit amazed at at how many there are now in terms of subscribers and so we'll just have a little chat have a couple announcements answer a couple of questions and just have a good time I'm
thinking I'll still announce this in a in a community post but I'm thinking Sunday at uh 11: a.m. Central Time might be a good time to do it but I'll still announce it look out for that and I hope we'll have a good time and I'll I'll see you then
