:salam2:
Walekum-As-Salaam,
Four conditions must exist if you want to find reality: Contentment, Inquiry, Self-awareness, Strength. Four ordinary, somewhat innocuous words.
Not reallly true as explained below and by the post from Nene23.
Contentment. This is the quality of restfulness in the mind. Someone who is content exists without doubt and fear.
OK.
Doubt is a constant reminder that there is no answer to the mystery of life, or that all answers will turn out to be untrustworthy.
Got it.
Fear is a constant reminder that you can be hurt. As long as either of these beliefs exist in your mind, resting easy in yourself is impossible.
OK.
So how does it help someone finding ‘reality’ ?
**All it talks about what being content is and what being fearful is. That’s all. **
Inquiry. To get real, you have to question the unreal over and over until it disappears.
Until what diasapper? The qestion? Duh!
Its like saying “question the darkness of the night until dawn comes”. lol
This process is a kind of peeling away. You look at something that seems reliable and trustworthy, and if it betrays your trust, you say, “No, this isn’t it,” and throw it away.
So in other words he is saying yo need to be skeptical. That is opposite of being content. (Pointed out by Nene23 as well)
Layer by layer, you keep inquiring until you reach something that is completely trustworthy, and that thing must be real.
Not really. And not always. When yo get to the end, you stil need to estion if the result is really trustworthy, since it assumes while peeling away with repeatedly questioning one is not biased. And ndeed one can have bias in even during iniring and searching on all the wrong places. Real may be but not really trstworthy.
Two different concepts.
**An item/phenomenon/person may be real and true but not for sure trustworthy. **
Self-Awareness. This quality tells you where to conduct your inquiry–
Again this can be opposite of being content. Not always, but being content can be a sign of being ignorant and not awareness.
not outside in the material world, but in yourself.
Does this mean being introvert is a way to find reality? Really?
Turning inward doesn’t happen as a single step.
**What does turning inward mean? **
Does this mean every event of turning inward has to start from lookng outward? Nope. Not always.
**For every challenge there are always two solutions–inner and outer. **
Only by working through every reason to look outward are you left with why you should look inward.
Why should it be considered as a rule that if one looks outward, one will always fail and will be left with the choice of looking inward?
**Reality for the most part is not absolute. **
It depends on both the person’s inner feelings/bias of what should the reality be and also what the person observe outside.
Strength. Because you are looking inward, no one from the outside can help you.
**The word ’ can help’ assumes weakness. Not strength. Correct sentence should have been (if he meant lookng inward as being synonym of having strength) **(Assmption on my part)
“Because if you are looking inward, you do not need outside help”. Still this sentence would be incorrect.
This implies a kind of isolation and solitude that only the strong can accept. Strength is not a given. Your inner strength grows from experience.
Contradiction again.
If inner strength grows from experience as he says, then where does this experience come from? Outside! Right?
You test what you find out until it feels secure.
Test based on what?
One shuts down outward and goes inward and tests the finding from ‘outside’ on merely inner feelings?
Sounds like a mental instituton dweller who looks at world only based on his/her inner feelings, no matter what they maybe.
The journey itself makes you strong.
How? Read above.
Adapted from The Book of Secrets, by Deepak Chopra (Harmony Books, 2004).