If we want to follow the path of chastity and aspire that our wife first be chaste, then we are failures already.
If we want to cease being drunkards but we become embarrassed when we are offered a drink because of whet others will say, or because our friends could become angry, then we will never cease to be drunkards.
If we want to cease being angry, irascible, irate, furious, but as a prior condition we demand that those who interact with us be sweet and serene and that they do nothing that bothers us, then yes we are failures because they are not saints and at any moment they will put an end to our good intentions.
Our thoughts, feelings and actions should flow independently from the inside towards the outside.
The worst difficulties offer us the best opportunities.
In the past there existed many sages surrounded by all types of luxuries and without difficulties of any type.
In difficult situations we have formidable opportunities to study our internal and external impulses, our thoughts, sentiments, actions, our reactions, volitions, etc.
Interaction is a full-length mirror where we can see ourselves as we are and not as we apparently are.
Interaction is a marvel; if we are properly attentive we can discover at each instant our most secret defects, they flourish, leap out when we least expect it.
We have known many persons who say: “I no longer have anger”, and at the least provocation they thunder and flash like lightning.
Others say: “I no longer have jealousy”, but one smile from the spouse to any good neighbor is enough for their faces to be green with jealousy.
People protest because of the difficulties that interaction offers them.
The one who depends on the conduct of others is not free.
Only the one who becomes truly free knows what love is. The slave does not know what true love is.
If we are slaves of the thinking, feeling and doing of others, we will never know what love is.
Love is born in us when we put an end to psychological slavery.
We need to comprehend very profoundly, and in all the areas of the mind, that entire complicated mechanism of psychological slavery.
Psychological slavery exists not only internally but also externally. Intimate, secret, occult slavery exists which we do not even remotely suspect.
The slave believes that he loves, when in reality he is only fearing. The slave does not know what true love is.
The woman who fears her husband believes that she adores him when truly, she is only fearing him.
The husband who fears his wife believes that he loves her when in reality what is happening is that he fears her.
He may fear that she may leave with someone else, or that her character may become sour, or that she may deny him sexually, etc.
The employee who fears the boss believes that he loves him, that he respects him, that he cares for his interests, etc.
No psychological slave knows what love is; psychological slavery is incompatible with love.
There are two types of conduct: the first is the one which comes from the outside to the inside and the second one is the one which goes from the inside to the outside.
The first is the result of psychological slavery and is produced by reaction: They catch us and so we catch, they insult us and we answer with aggression.
The second type of conduct is the best, that of one who is no longer a slave, that of one who no longer has anything to do with the thinking, feeling and doing of the others.
That type of conduct is independent; it is upright and just conduct.
