Ojai, California | Fifth Talk in The Oak Grove, 1946
Questioner: Is there anything that one can do to be aware?
Krishnamurti: Are you not in conflict, in sorrow? If you are, do you not search out its cause? The cause is the self, its torturing desires. To struggle with these desires only creates resistance, further pain, but if you are choicelessly aware of your craving, then there comes creative understanding. It is the truth of this understanding that liberates, not your struggle against resistance to envy, anger, pride, and so on. So awareness is not an act of will for will is resistance, the effort made by the self through desire to acquire, to grow, whether positively or negatively. Be aware of acquisitiveness, passively observing its ways on different levels; you will find this rather arduous, for thought-feeling sustains itself on identification, and it is this which prevents the understanding of accumulation. Be aware; take the journey of self-discovery. Do not ask what is going to happen on this journey, which only betrays anxiety, fear, indicating your desire for security, for certainty. This desire for refuge prevents self-knowledge, self-unfoldment, and so, understanding. Be aware of this inward anxiety and directly experience it; then you will discover what this awareness reveals. But unfortunately most of you only desire to talk about the journey without undertaking it.
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