🎧 Please listen to the audio using the player above.☝️ In the eighth episode of Nectar of Peace, we will explore the origin of feelings of disappointment and dissatisfaction. At the same time, we will discover an important key to easing, or even better, to avoiding them as much as possible. And to bring a little laughter, I’ve added a joke that nicely complements today’s lesson. What you’ll hear in this episode: * The two-sidedness of life – inner and outer consciousness * Where to seek true contentment and happiness? * Hidden, rapidly growing progress * Nothing is lost * The importance of inner experience My name is Mitja Žibert, and I’ll be your host on this podcast, which serves as an invitation to personal and spiritual growth. Thanks for listening / reading Nectar of Peace 🙏 Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. Sources: * Novo: Lectures and Q&A archive If this episode resonated with you, consider sharing it with friends or loved ones - you might just help someone on their path. Episode transcription Welcome to the Nectar of Peace podcast, which is dedicated to sharing universal truths and wisdom taught by humanity’s greatest teachers and sages. My name is Mitja Žibert, and I’ll be joining you in discovering these invaluable teachings that, if we choose to follow them, lead us to a life filled with the nectar of peace - which is what we all seek and need. So, let’s see where we can discover and embrace it today. Life, as most of us know it, inevitably brings disappointment and discontent. Some experience it less, others more. For some, these feelings arise more often, for others less so. And similarly, for some, they come sooner, for others, later. Yet no matter how much or when they occur, these are the feelings that no one truly wishes to feel. That is why, in today’s episode, I’ll explore the source of these negativities. Understanding their origin is key to overcoming them, or even better, to avoiding them as much as possible. And once again, we will find that the same culprit is behind this, just as in all the other troubles that accompany humanity throughout life. To reveal this culprit, we turn once more to teacher Novo, who offers an explanation unfolding across several layers of understanding, through both practical examples and deeper, subtler truths. So, if any part of it doesn’t seem clear at first, don’t worry. Take your time to let it sink in, and feel free to return and listen again if needed. It is also worth noting that today’s answer applies both to our external, material experiences and to our inner, spiritual ones. In other words, it can help us find success in both material and spiritual growth. In either case, disappointment and discontent signal that somewhere along the way, we’ve lost touch with this important key to happiness and fulfillment. And Novo presents this key in two parts. The first part addresses the two-sidedness of our lives and the importance of giving attention to both sides. The second part reveals the essential element needed to manifest what we truly desire as individuals. Novo shares the first part, the two-sidedness of our lives, as follows: Teachings “Reality and real life inevitably come to an end in time. If a person truly lives in reality, sooner or later they will face ultimate disappointment. Why? Because for us to be satisfied with anything, we would need to be able to hold it still, to keep it frozen in time for as long as we wish. But life is not still. We cannot stop life. It is life that leads us, not we who lead it. If we look at how life leads us, we can see that this means that, if we live rightly, we remain content no matter where life takes us. But if, at some point, we try to lead life ourselves, then the way of living that we plan and follow, all the possibilities, all the directions, everything we take upon ourselves, inevitably ends in complete collapse or definitive disappointment. And ultimately, that is the whole point: that a person comes to realize there is nothing in life. That one comes to see that, apart from disappointment, life holds nothing else.” Let me add here that this once again highlights the importance of living by duties rather than by obligations. Which is what we explored in greater detail in the previous episode. Here, Novo continues that… “… a person must therefore understand that as their consciousness and awareness grow, the greater the consciousness and the purer the intelligence, the more clearly they see that life is only temporarily present, and that we cannot bring it to a halt. For the greatest problem in life is precisely this: we cannot stop it. Yet a person finds satisfaction only in what seems to stand still in time, in something that endures forever or infinitely. That is what humans long for, but life itself is not like that. For when we live through outer consciousness, that consciousness ends with the death of the body. With inner consciousness, or balance, however, even when the body comes to an end or despite the passing of years, consciousness remains. This continuation of consciousness is somewhat like what happens when a person falls asleep at night. When one falls asleep and begins to dream pleasant dreams, they do not complain about having fallen asleep or about having lost something. In the same way, after death, new perspectives and new manifestations appear. For example, suppose we are sitting in a room and someone leaves it. During their absence, even if only for a brief time, they are, for us, dead, inaccessible. And when someone is inaccessible, whether for two minutes or for one, two, five, or ten lifetimes, there is no difference. The difference arises only when consciousness is interrupted, and this happens only when it is external. Such consciousness is interrupted because the external changes forms, changes the body, changes circumstances, and so on. This creates an unwanted pause. So, regardless of how many years a person lives, be it a hundred, two hundred, three hundred, or a thousand years, the problem is that when consciousness is external, one lives dependent on changing conditions. This means that growing up, they are dependent on others, because they are powerless. Likewise, when injury or illness occurs. This is also unwanted. And in old age, again, one is powerless. Thus, only a brief period of life, the period of maintenance that comes after maturity and before old age, so, a very small portion of life, is when a person can truly feel that life is beautiful or that they like it. After that, all of it is lost. And the fear of having to experience this again through lifetimes, through rebirth, going through the same powerlessness experienced before, through aging, old age, and death, is perceived by external consciousness as that life is suffering. With inner consciousness, however, a person observes the external world without attachment. They are aware that the external world is slipping away and is impermanent. One can easily recognize that if consciousness exists only externally, both such consciousness and the external world can always be lost, and they will be gone. Therefore, if a person does not learn to turn inward, they truly do not know how or what to do, and various unpleasant experiences arise, experiences they would rather not have. For humans, with their unique ability to live consciously are after all immortal beings. The physical body, however, is not immortal; it constantly changes. Even within a lifespan of a hundred years, we can see that we are never the same as when we were two, three, four, five, six, fifteen, twenty, ninety, or ninety-nine. A person cannot boast of having lived a hundred years. And what if they have lived a hundred years? Perhaps in those hundred years, they did not live spiritually even for two. What kind of life they lived for hundred years? So, one cannot boast that living outwardly, through the body, is sufficient. It is not sufficient! And that is that, when people lost the meaning of life and, in doing so, moved into an unwholesome way of living and developing. For if a person loses their inner consciousness, it is far more dangerous than losing their sight. If one loses sight but consciousness remains, that consciousness exists and knows that it exists. But if a person loses consciousness, even with perfect sight, they are unhappy and errant, for they do not know what to do with their vision. It is no wonder, then, that such a person experiences conflict: lacking inner consciousness, they see, yet are neither content nor happy. Thus, when they say, “I will go to sleep to rest,” even in sleep, seeing nothing, they feel more content than when they are looking.” As we have seen in this first part, a partial source of our disappointment and discontent lies in our lack of turning inward and, through that, in our lack of discovering our inner consciousness. This is not at all surprising, since even the most basic awareness of this has almost vanished today, let alone the knowledge of the path that leads to inner consciousness. Therefore, I will explore this path, this turning inward, which is emphasized in all spiritual teachings and traditions, in greater detail, probably in the next episode. In doing so, I will try to explain what turning inward truly means and how we can approach it in practice. For now, let us continue with the second part, in which Novo unites both outer and inner consciousness, the material and the spiritual, and in doing so, offers practical guidance on how to avoid further disappointment and discontent. He says the following: “The problem is that all forms of upbringing, education, and proper guidance of the generations being born, so that they may live righteously, have been discarded. Yet, despite this, it is important to remember that this way of living, which makes people unhappy, can be changed. 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