by Guy Finley
If we mistakenly give any negative reaction its “life”—then the opposite must hold true: we can consciously withdraw that same life any time we so choose! Starve a cold, feed a fever. Starve a reaction, feed your freedom!
Meet your Teacher
Grants Pass, OR, USA
Transcript
Our title, The material, Has everything to do with this idea of how to escape the chain of negative reactions. We'll look at this idea of a chain of negative reactions, But first let's bring up the key lesson. Read along with me if you will. If we mistakenly give any negative reaction its life, Then the opposite must hold true. We can consciously withdraw the same life anytime we so choose. If we mistakenly give any negative reaction its life, Then the opposite must hold true. We can consciously withdraw that same life anytime we so choose. We can consciously withdraw our unseen identification with any negative state that momentarily claims it and that we become complicit in that action. I can't tell you how much power there is in that idea, But you have to first be brought into perhaps some new ideas or at least an encouragement to realize. Well, For instance, I don't know how many of you are familiar with A Christmas Carol, Dickens' story of Scrooge, And the tale is set pretty much in the beginning and Scrooge is just that, A miser, Someone who is terribly attached to money, So much so that he starves his employee, Bob Cratchit. A whole host of things go on, But we discover at a certain point that Scrooge's old partner, Marley, Shows up one night at midnight, No, In Scrooge's office, And he's wrapped in these chains and these chains are linked to these treasure chests and Marley's wailing and scaring Scrooge to death. And it's evident that Marley wants Scrooge to realize that if you remain attached and identified with this idea of money, Of security through possession, You're going to wind up like me in this afterlife, Chained and floating through life, Wrapped up in these chains and they're terrible. Now, We can see this idea, But I want to enlarge it now to get you to see that when it comes to these chains, There is no difference between the attachment to wealth, Image, And attachment to our own negative reactions. But we don't know how we are attached to our own negative reactions. But we are, For all intents and purposes, Chained, Much in the same way as Marley, By them, But again, We don't see it. So let's just look at this for a moment together. Don't believe me. Be totally skeptical, But at least be willing to see whether or not what I'm saying corresponds to your experience. Have you ever felt chained by a negative reaction? You know what I'm asking. Here I am and somebody cuts me off on the freeway and for the next 20 minutes I'm wrapped up in these angry thoughts. Someone disrespects me and I spend the next three days literally in the chains of this conflict that I feel that I blame on this person for my negativity. We can see, If we're honest, That we just don't have a negative reaction and it goes away. We can see that negative reaction binds to another thought, That binds to another set of associations, That binds to more resistance, And gradually forms a chain that we struggle with, Believing the condition that's gone is responsible for our captivity, When the truth is, We have, Without knowing it, Created and wrapped ourselves in a certain kind of chain of identification and attachment to these negative reactions. I don't want to go too quick. I've got a story to tell you, But I want to explain so much of this to you. Let's back up. First, You can see, I trust, That every reaction has its own particular chemical signature and literally the body becomes habituated to it. You think of a piece of chocolate and your body has a corresponding reaction where it's hungry for these dopamines. Each reaction has its own chemical signature and our body actually becomes, In one respect, Habituated, If not addicted, To those kind of chemicals that are induced into the system when the mind entertains the image, When the mind remembers what it does. And this is especially true when it comes to painful negative reactions. Because the part, Each negative reaction, Is not only a sudden dump into this physical and psychic system, But the body and the psychic part connected to the resistance to the moment actually forges these links as it starts thinking about why, Where, What, And what to do. What must I free my. . . It is resisting the appearance of this initial thought, This initial activity that triggered that resistance. You cannot have a negative reaction that isn't preceded by some form of resistance. Now, I trust you're following me so far. Once this negative reaction starts, The body is pumped with certain chemicals. Adrenaline, Other hormones that do what? Breathing is quickened, Blood vessels constrict, Tension mounts, Anxiety starts to strengthen itself, And then the mind. . . This is all going on in the dark. We don't see any of this. Then the mind that had that reaction, Not you, But something in the content of that unconscious nature that was, In quotes, Triggered by some condition, Then begins to resist its own response to whatever it is that moved into it and through it. And the more the body resists the very chemical reaction that was stimulated in it, The more it has reactions. And so you can see, If you're following me, That there is indeed a kind of chain, A chain reaction that appears and then is linked and linked and linked by that unconscious nature trying to free itself from the condition that it induced. This is what I would call a chain of negative reactions, And I'm introducing how we are, Without knowing it, Unconsciously complicit in its creation. So that, Moving along, In essence, If you can see it, The more I don't want, The more I resist and then try to free myself from the chains that are created, The more I do that, The more I'm complicit in creating the next chain and the next chain that we're going to look at together to see how it's constructed and then ultimately the purpose of this talk, How we can begin to escape, Literally break, The chains of these negative reactions. So, As a little bit of an introduction into the next section, I'm going to tell a story. It's a little bit of a how, But we'll start with a simple idea. Kate, Let's bring up the second key lesson, Please. It reads, Drum roll, I don't see it, But I'll just say it. Starve a cold, Feed a fever. Starve a reaction, Feed your freedom. Starve a cold, Feed a fever. You know that saying, Which, By the way, Isn't true. You should always nourish yourself when the body is breaking down. Just be careful what you put into it. But to the point, We get that idea, Starve a cold, Feed a fever. Starve a reaction, Feed your freedom. Now, The question is, Of course, What does it mean to starve a reaction? This is what we're going to look at now with a story. Now, This story is a bit of a kind of a rehash, In a way, Of an old story I wrote. I don't even know when or what book it was in, But it was all about a young man, His wife, His family, A fisherman in a small village that makes their living and their life on fishing, And a certain strange character by the name of Hans, Who, No matter what everyone else experiences on the open waters when they're fishing, Sometimes these great storms come in, Especially on the other side of the island, Where the shoals are so rich with the herring and the other fish that they depend upon. Hans always has abundant fish, Not just to sell, But to share with his community and certainly for himself. Now, Franz is frustrated because he doesn't understand how Hans can always do this in spite of the weather. So one night, He sneaks over, Camps out overnight on the little overcrop looking down into the valley where Hans has his little boat, Right off of the shoals, And he watches to see what's the secret that Hans has. You got the story? Now, Next morning, Franz, Sitting there with his binoculars, Watching Hans go out to his little boat, Little dory, And rose out to these shoals, And he starts dropping down his anchor, And all of a sudden, Out of nowhere, This immense windstorm comes up, And the waves start rocking back and forth. Now, Franz is looking, And for the first five minutes, Hans is just like laying in the boat, And Franz thinks to himself, Did he get knocked out? What's going on? He's going to die. His boat's going to get swamped, And he tries, Even though he knows he's giving away his position, Starts yelling, Hans, Hans, Wake up, Wake up, Man, Wake up. Nothing. Another five-minute storm escalating. Then all of a sudden, Seemingly out of nowhere, Hans kind of stirs in the boat, Stands up in his little dory there, And raises his hands open like this to the sky, And even as he's raising his hands like this, Almost like a concert, Like a conductor, The storm begins to fade, And by the time Hans has his hands just high, The storm's gone. Franz is looking at this, He can't believe it. What's going on? And that's not all. Even as that's happening, And Hans begins to lower his hands, Fish start jumping into the boat. Now, Imagine for a second you were watching this. Franz thinks to himself, I'm looking at a wizard. No wonder he's got all the time this fish, In spite of the weather, And he can't help himself. He runs down to the little dock there on the beach where Hans is rowing back in with his catch of fish, And he's waiting for Hans when he gets there. And he says, Forgive me, Forgive me, I know, I know I shouldn't have been here watching, But what in the world just happened? How did you do that? And Hans is an older man. Sorry. Hans is an older man, You know, White beard, Certainly none the better for the wearer. He's had a difficult life, But he stands up as they rose to the dock, And he says, I'm not sure what you're speaking about. He says, What do you mean you're not sure what I'm speaking about? I just watched whatever that was. Hans says, Look, I don't know exactly what you're asking me, But I can pretty much tell you that I had gone out there, And I didn't sleep that well the night before, And I guess I fell asleep in the boat. I just kind of closed my eyes for a second, And I just kind of fell asleep, That's all. And Franz says, Yeah, Yeah, Great. I yelled, But I guess the wind was knocking down my voice. But the next thing I knew, No longer, Seven, Eight, Ten minutes later, You stood up in your boat, You raised your hands, And as you raised them, The storm diminished, And when the storm died, The fish jumped in your boat. What's going on? Tell me about this miracle. I saw it with my own eyes. Hans looks at him very innocently. Well, It's really simple, He said, And I think you're making a lot more out of it, And Franz interrupts him. No, What's not simple, Not to me. Please explain what I just saw happen. Hans says, I guess, I'm guessing that what you witnessed was the moment where I woke up to the immediate danger of my situation, And my newly awakened awareness of that situation changed it. I was asleep, I didn't know what was going on, Clearly in danger, But the minute that I opened my eyes, This newly awakened awareness changed the condition I was asleep to the moment before. Now, Just pause for a moment, Because that's what Franz is doing. What are you saying? Not only I don't understand what you're saying, But what was that business with raising your hands? And Hans said, Well, You know, It's personal, He said, But I was giving silent thanks for being awakened to the danger of my situation, The joy of my situation. Hans says, Yeah, I know it's strange, Isn't it? But that's what happens any time I'm grateful for being awakened when I've fallen asleep out at sea. Now, Maybe like Franz, You're wondering, What's this secret that Hans is conveying, That my newly awakened awareness changed the condition I was asleep to the moment before? What has that got to do with diminishing the storm? That's what we're going to look at, Because Hans, Friendly as he was in sensing the true interest on the part of, Franz says, Do you want to talk about this? Come on in, We'll have a cup of tea and I'll describe it to you. I'll help you understand as best I can what I've told you. Story ends, But it does continue. Now, Imagine for a moment that we're sitting there listening to Hans and Franz, But basically bringing ourselves into the present moment. I want you for just a moment to think back, And it shouldn't be hard, But I don't want you to linger in the reaction to your own memory very much connected to this talk. Think back on some very painful experience in your past. I know for me, These things are pretty quick. Maybe connected to someone betraying you, Maybe a loss of some kind, Maybe some huge misstep that you made, Or maybe you misjudged someone or did something, And that caused a reaction and that brought about this cataclysmic series of events that in an attempt to escape or otherwise change that moment, You did other things. Whereas some negative reaction engulfed you, Chained you, And carried you along as it did. For instance, Maybe someone broke your heart, Someone lied to you, And in an attempt to deal with the pain of the resistance to that moment, The pain of not wanting that, Literally, That negative reaction, So in an attempt to deal with it, Maybe I guess the simplest thing, Maybe you just lost control of yourself. We all know what that's like. Overtaken by anger, Overtaken by some kind of depression or anxiety, Some resistance to a moment that rolls along and creates another link, Says, Have that drink, Eat that food, Take this trip, Spend money you don't have, Point being that you can see that the onset of some reaction tends to produce in us the continuation of something inside of us that tries to escape the pain of that moment. So that what seems to us to be the continuation of that pain is really an unseen complicity that we have with our own psychic system, Our own psychology, So that it tries as best it can, Just as it did in the past, It carries forward with it in these present moments, It tries as best as it can to escape the pain of that reaction. It doesn't want that, And that seems natural to us. But the problem is that the resistance that we feel to the pain of this moment that seems somehow or other to either separate us from the moment we don't want, Or at least in that resistance promises some new reality if we just pursue what it suggests will save us, That resistance creates another link in the chain, And resistance does that. That's what resistance does, So that not only do we unknowingly forge one link after another born of this initial resistance to some painful moment, But in that continual creation of the link one by one, If we can begin to see that it is we, This unconscious nature, That is forging the very chains that we blame on the conditions outside of us, Then in the moment of the realization that the chains that we are struggling to throw off are being forged by our own identification with the moment we don't want, In that moment that chain can be broken just like that, Because you can start to see what's been forging it, Which is what? A tired old sense of self reasserting itself again, Again, And again, And that the greater the resistance to the moment we don't want, The more insistent that part of our nature is, That the storm we're in in that moment is a product of something that has set itself against us in life, When really all that's happened is that we have set ourselves against a moment in life that has come for all intents and purposes to reveal to us through our own resistance an unconscious nature that is already asleep. Let's not pull any punches here. It's not like I fall asleep and then this happens. It's more like I walk through life asleep, Waiting for certain moments to come along this nature, This unconscious sense of self, Literally looking around for something to set off some old reaction, Some form of it, So that then this sense of self suddenly chained by this moment it doesn't want, Being dragged down, Then it can set itself against what it has remembered and it can resist the reality it's made for itself and continue to go through life like that. I won't say any names, I never do, But I was speaking, I guess it was, What is today? Saturday? Yeah, Wednesday night. And a young woman came in, I speak in front of a group of students, Not only online, But we have a foundation in Southern Oregon, I speak several times a week, They're for free again, Everyone's welcome, Nothing's asked, Three dollar donation, Asked for, If you can do it, Great, If not, No problem. And this woman walked in and you could see, Well, I should say I can see, Sometimes we can sense these things, But one day you will see, She was wrapped in a dark atmosphere, Literally that she would, She walked in with the weight of a hundred thousand years of collected negative thought, Setting itself against itself and blaming that person or that circumstance for her sorrow and whatever the nature of that pain was. She sat down in her chair and recognizing as I can, The reality of this individual's life, I was able to say a few things as I was proceeding with the material that was intended just in some small way, Much as I'm doing here with you, To help her at least suspect that this suffering that she wears like some red badge of courage isn't because of a situation in her past, But rather an order of self that carries everything forward with it, Forward with it, A conditioned nature that is already carrying these chains and the weight of them and the pain of them, Can't wait to find something again to blame for the weight of the thing that we were complicit in creating and in the resistance to the next moment, Forge another chain and prove to herself as she did that there was no way. And it wasn't 10 minutes into the talk that she got up and stormed out of the room and was gone because that nature does not want to hear anything at all about what Hans told Franz. Let's revisit it. I'm guessing what you witnessed was the moment I woke up to the immediate danger of my situation and my newly awakened awareness changed the condition I was asleep to the moment before. I'm guessing what you witnessed was the moment I woke up and I realized, God, I'm about to get angry again. The anger is coming in and it wants to look at you and it wants to point to them. The chain has suddenly been brought out again. There's the weight of that disappointment, The weight of that betrayal. There it is. It appears. And in the moment of its appearance, We have no awareness how immediate the danger is that we will somehow or other want to get rid of the pain of that by reliving the nature that was responsible for that chain of links, Of that chain of reactions to begin with. Hans simply said, You know what? The moment I woke up to the fact that I had fallen asleep and a storm had come, By awakening to that moment and seeing what was going on, I no longer had to be caught in that storm. With God as my witness, This is the truth. Christ on the waters, Quieting them, Even telling his disciples, If you just had a little faith, Meaning if you just understood a little bit of this idea of scale as above, So below, That any form of disturbance in this world has its counterpart in the world above it. And if you understand the relationship in these principles and how they respond to each other and give rise to each other, What is timeless into what is in time, Then you would realize that you don't have to carry that painful or otherwise miserable moment with you one more step. Isn't it amazing how familiar these negative reactions are? And that in spite of reliving and reliving and reliving them, It never dawns on us, Never even, It can't have a chance to, Because these chains don't just wrap the body and the heart, They wrap the mind, They blind the mind. And one of our biggest problems, One of my own students alluded to this last night in the student-led study group, I don't want to hear about these negative reactions, I'm not interested, Why do we have to talk about negative reactions? I'm telling you why we have to talk about these negative reactions, Because we are chained by them. I can have a negative reaction just listening to somebody tell me, Like that woman, She actually added another link to her set of chains when refusing the information that all it was was a revelation. That's all I do. I'm not a teacher. I show people what it is that I have seen that is true. And if it corresponds with what you know is true, Then good for you. Then you can begin this journey of exploration into this inside world, Where without knowing it, We're complicit in the unending creation, Not just of our own chains. The world is chained. It's chained to the violence that it believes can bring an end to violence, Which is just resistance reiterating itself and blaming someone or something else outside of itself for the pain of the weight of the world that it says you put on my shoulders. Nobody put any weight on your shoulders. My yoke is easy. My burden is light. So that we can, Once we start recognizing the moment of this weight, Yes, Two masters in one body. Actually, It's one master divided into two, Angie, Angela, But let me not get off track here. You know what it's like to feel the negative reaction. You know what it's like to feel the negative reaction. Our work is to become a little bit more present in the moment of its first appearance, So that in our awakening to the storm that is brewing within our own unconscious nature, We can open our interior eyes and realize the only way that we're going to have our ship sunk, The only way we're going to be dragged down by this chain of negative reactions, Is if we unconsciously remain complicit with its continuity. And if I can understand the truth of that, Then I can, In that same moment that I see the truth of what is taking place, In that moment, I am new. In that moment, I am new. A new I, Not the old I that first was triggered, And certainly not the collection of old eyes that assemble in this link called legion that do nothing but lash us and then point to problems outside of us as responsible for the pain. In that moment, In that split second, When I wake up, I'm new. That I has come out from amongst them, And when it comes out from amongst them, It knows that what it has come out from amongst all of these corresponding associated painful thoughts and feelings, In that moment, It's entirely new and it can see everything that is old. So you need, If you want to work with what I'm telling you, Not in order to experience some magic moment where, Oh my God, But that you might gather the significant spiritual data, The information, That as you're able to understand, It will bring an end to the useless waste of all this energy, Actually creating the chains you're trying to swiggle out of. And you remember this, You practice time and time again, Anytime that you feel this grip of a troubling reaction, You remember, You are free. The moment you realize the only thing binding you to any negative reaction is that you have become, Once again, Momentarily identified with an unconscious nature that mechanically remembers its own painful experiences and then resists the very reactions it brings up in itself. So that freedom isn't something that we create, It's something that's already present and that we can re-enter into and realize the experience of what? Like Hans, I was asleep, I was driving in my car, I was talking to my husband, I had a conversation with my wife, I was at the office, I got an email, A text, Boom, There it is. Only now, Instead of there it is, And then our unconscious, Unwitting complicity with allowing that initial resistance, Which is nothing other than something from our past being pulled up by something that triggers the associations connected to it. And up it comes, And when that boat rocks like it did with Hans, Ah, Wait a minute, Whoa, I can feel it. Everything in me wants to go along with the part of me that's saying, Oh no, Here's the weight, Here's the pain, Here's the pain, Here's the weight, Here's the problem, Here's the pain, Here's this suffering, Here's the past. Everything wants to go along, But you must understand that you don't have to go along. The momentary awareness, And that's maybe all it can be for at first, Is just a split second of a recognition that there is in this moment not another kind of reality, That there is in this moment a true reality that has awakened you from an unreal life, An unreal nature that only keeps itself real, Reincarnating itself by bringing you into this identification with these reactions, So that in the resistance that ensues, It can just roll along and create the next chain and the next chain. I don't know if you've seen this in yourself, But certainly you have seen it in other people. You wouldn't be joining me for these talks if there wasn't something in you that recognized the truth of this. Sweet God, You can look, You go into a restaurant, You walk down the street, You turn on the TV. Christ said, Let the dead bury the dead. Who are the dead that Christ was speaking of? The men and women who over time, And not just in a single lifetime, And not just their own consciousness, Has conspired to create these chains. We're enslaved by our ignorance, And we're complicit in its continuity every time we allow some negative reaction to become the seed of this resistance that, Like some great metal machinery forging link after link, Drags us down and drags us down. And the more we're dragged down into that pain, The more we fight with what we believe is the problem that's produced it. So you just work. Be like Hans, Or be like Franz, Who's listening to Hans explain this, And then see for yourself if it's true or not. This old nature, The pharaoh of pain, It lives to consume whatever it can capture, Whatever it can enslave. And human beings—see, This is what you don't want to hear, But I don't care. When you are a captive of a negative reaction, You are the slave of an unconscious nature that has chained you in the past, And that gets you to forge more links to those chains every time it can get you to not want to experience what it has brought to you that you don't have to go into. All you have to do is see the truth of it. The momentary awareness of this condition is what shatters that chain about to be linked. Link by link, And eventually the whole chain falls away. It isn't that you don't experience it. That old pharaoh of pain will try every trick in the book, And it does. It's had millions of years to master the way in which it can deceive human beings into delivering themselves into the chain-making factory. That's what it is. But the beautiful thing about what I'm saying to you is that God can't be deceived. What is true in you, This light, It can't be deceived by a shadow. We've just spent our life believing in these shadow sufferings, These moments of pain that are sure enough. What is the saying? The feel is real, But the why is a lie. Yeah, It feels like I'm chained, But the why behind it is the lie. And once I perceive that, I wake up a little bit. When I wake up for that split second, I am free because I can see what I couldn't see before, Which is this dark master, In quotes, The pharaoh of pain, Tricking me into forging another link by the continuity, The continuation of that consciousness that can't do anything but wish it wasn't doing and going through what it, In quotes, Had to go through. You don't have to go through anything. You can bring it into that relationship anytime you want to. You can use any negative reaction to break its time-forged chains. And in the awareness of that possibility and your work to stay with it and stay with it and stay with it, You will free yourself. You will shatter those chains. I got a couple minutes. I can sit here and look at the screen, Which I have to do, Or I can look at you. Let's see. When I find myself in great fear and I can become aware of it sometimes, The fear dissipates, But much of the time the suffering pain remains. My awareness is there, But it doesn't seem to transform the pain, So I sit with it. Is there something else I can do in that moment or is presence enough? This is a great question, Laura. I described to you, Didn't I? We have a negative reaction. The body's flooded. Then the body begins to resist the breakup of its own equilibrium. It starts to fight against the very chemicals that the unconscious mind has helped, Has triggered it into inducing. And then it starts to fight with itself. There's no magic pill, Men and women. You want something like that. You want to drive through happiness. It's not like that. But now instead of uselessly suffering, What turns out to be the creation of another link in the very chain I'm suffering for wearing, I can be present enough and literally, With God as my witness, Watch the whole thing dissolve. Because when you will no longer uselessly suffer, But voluntarily, Consciously suffer, Seeing the machination of this broken machine, The machine is not only healed because you're no longer complicit in identifying with its activity, But you are released from the activity that it has subjected you to for millennia. You can see miracles. You will know it. Not something you wish upon a star and hope it happens. But the silent action of making this wish to be free into an experience that's right with you every moment of the day. And you just have to be willing to be present enough and then pay the cost of this freedom. The strange thing is the cost, The real cost of freedom, Is to lay down an unconscious nature that swears it wants freedom, But that delivers you into the pharaoh of pain, Delivers you into the hands of something that's not interested in your freedom. It's interested in its own continuity. Then the wheat is separated from the chaff, And the more that takes place, The freer you are.
