Call On The Light Of Self-Understanding GF Live 04-12-25

43:52

43:52

Call On The Light Of Self-Understanding GF Live 04-12-25

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talks

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Meditation

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While it's impossible to be entirely free of a psychological body – including the elements inherent in the constant appearance of its deeply conditioned reactions – we are free to change our relationship to that body and – is so doing – start working to liberate ourselves from being unconsciously identified with what amounts to negative thoughts and feelings of the self-created kind.

Psychology Energy Consciousness Unconscious Mind Self Transformation Observation Emotional Embodiment Higher Consciousness

Meet your Teacher

Grants Pass, OR, USA

Meet your Teacher

Grants Pass, OR, USA

Transcript

If you look at a beautiful painting by a Monet or you hear one of Bach's concertos, You don't need anybody to explain to you the balance of that art, The harmony of those musical passages because you're participating in them. But all of us sense to one degree or another that there is a certain art, A certain harmony, A balance and a beauty that's missing from our lives. And it doesn't, At least to our present understanding, Play itself out in front of us. It doesn't reveal itself, Although it does, Which we're going to look at together today. So that these talks are descriptions. They're not the thing described, They're a way in which, God willing, A person can begin to catch a faint bit of color or light, A strand, A single line of the potential harmony that the heavens are always bringing into this world. And with that in mind, I'm going to read a key lesson, Talk about it for a moment, Give you the title of the talk, And then I'm going to post the first four or five paragraphs so that even though we have to move through them quickly, If you sense anything in what we discuss, You can come back and see the key ideas to this material. So here we go. Kate, Bring up the title of the talk, Please. Call on the light of self-understanding to see through dark and negative reactions. Call on the light of self-understanding to see through dark and negative reactions. If we're honest, We don't see through dark and negative reactions. We let dark and negative reactions tell us what we see. And until that changes, There's nothing that can change about the experience we have of life. Again, The point of the material we're going to look at together today. Let's bring up the key lesson, Kate. Read along with me, Everybody. While it's impossible to be entirely free of a psychological body, Including the elements inherent in the constant appearance of its deeply conditioned reactions, We are free to change our relationship to that body, And in so doing, Start working to liberate ourselves from being unconsciously identified with what amounts to negative thoughts and feelings of the self-created kind. Just briefly, What does it mean? It's impossible to be entirely free of a psychological body, Including the elements inherent in the constant appearance of its conditioned reactions. We know what a personality is, And we think it is our personality. What you call your personality is not your personality. You are the person operated by the conditions that brought that set of characters and qualities into play, So that we can never be free altogether of this personality, Of this interface that is created between a mind struggling to understand its real role, And finding itself always out of place relative to what it imagines is supposed to happen. So that this personality is filled with the content of our past, Of our incomplete understanding of the experiences, And these conditioned reactions go before us at all times, Not to make the crooked places straight, But to tell us what reality is, And what we need to do to start walking a better line towards a better solution. So this key lesson points to the fact that we must change our relationship to that body, To this body, This psychological construct that is already conditioned to meet the moment with what it believes it must in order to be free, Safe, And secure, According to its own conditioned ideas of what freedom, Security, And safety is. Let's move on. I'm going to ask Kate to bring up one section at a time of what will set the stage for our study. Let's bring up the first section, Kate. Please don't post while we're going through this. For us, Even a small negative reaction creates a corresponding, Often conflicting set of choices over what to do about that reaction. What does that mean? So I have a negative reaction. If you examine yourself, Which you must, If you're not examining yourself, This place is not for you. I have a negative reaction, And the minute that reaction comes, What comes with it? A corresponding, Often conflicting set of choices over what to do about that reaction. You do something, Oh my God, Why are you like that? And what happens the minute that the mind poses a question about the reaction? The mind that poses the question about the reaction then sorts through its already conceived solutions to reconciling it. But these choices that the mind believes it's making about this reaction themselves are conflicting because one says, Well, I better make peace. Another says, I need to get angry and set you straight. So the minute there's a reaction, There is a question that comes up about it. And the question seems to prove that I, Who am having this reaction, I am somehow separate from what I'm reacting to. That's an illusion. Let's look at it deeper. So these reactions that create corresponding choices are what? Let's go to the next part of this post. They are similar to a stone thrown into a pond. We all know what that looks like. Where in that analogy, The ripples created by the impact are physically speaking, Waves of energy and time. We've seen this. You throw a stone in a pond and you can see these ripples that go out from the center where the energy of that stone coming into the water is transferred into the medium of that water and produces wave after wave after wave. And you can see that that just acts itself out in physical time until that energy is expanded, Expended. So this is very much like what happens when we have a reaction, A condition, Some form of action comes into this consciousness and creates an instantaneous transfer of energy. A ripple, If you want to use that word, Is created in this consciousness. And then like the ripples that move across the face of a pond, These ripples of thoughts and feelings, They carry us along through time so that the action produces ripples of thoughts, Feelings, Choices, Conflicting with each other, Each one producing more ripples until basically what? There's a storm going on in this consciousness. Let's bring up the next part. And while in this world of physical experiences, Talking about the stone and the pond and their corresponding sensations, Where active forces, In this instance, The stone produces a passive response that revealed there's been an intersection of opposing forces of some kind through a pond in a stone, The pond, The surface of the pond, Having a surface friction resists the entrance of that energy. And we can see the effect of these opposing forces that are the ripples. But we're not looking at the physical world here. We're looking at the invisible world. And we can see, If you can follow the analogy, That there is obviously at least one other higher world. Bring up the next part, Kate, Please. We can also see that there is at least one other higher world where, Similar to the stone in the pond, Invisible lines of energy interface with the passive content of this consciousness and produce, In that moment, A creation of certain levels of matter. So that in the physical world, These lines of energy keep moving along as they must. But within us, These lines of energy are not intended to roll on and on and on with new thoughts and feelings and choices predicated on them. But in this higher world, Where this energy, This active force enters into this passive consciousness designed, Created to receive it, In that moment of intersection, A new conception completes the reason for that relationship. In physical world, Stone goes in a pond, Energy transferred, Ripples of energy until they play themselves out. In the spiritual world, In the higher levels of awareness, This energy, The will of the divine, The condition that has come into existence from timelessness into time, It strikes this consciousness awaiting that energy. And in the interaction of these forces, Instead of ripples created in time produced by a reaction, We see that, And I've spoken of this before, In that moment, The reaction is complete in itself. How do we know the reaction is complete in itself and doesn't need to be carried on by ripples of thoughts and feelings, Seeking solutions to whatever has disturbed it? Because we can see as above, So below. When there is a reaction of sunlight striking the leaf of a tree, In that moment, The reaction completes the relationship between the sun and the leaf. It is done. A new energy, A new form is created. And that new form is the completion, The expression of those energies, Active and passive, Completing themselves in a timeless world. So that there's nothing that goes on from either the active or the passive forces, Rather a new life is given birth, And then it takes its place in this relationship of active will, Passive condition, And the relationship between them. I had her print this out for you so you could go back, But I want to know, Do you see something in this? Can you hear something? Can you sense something in what I'm describing to you about the different worlds of a physical reaction versus the psychological body and what's intended to take place when these energies enter into it for the purpose of completing what was incomplete within it the moment before? I do try to bring what is invisible, Unseen, Timeless into something that we can at least sense and touch and hopefully see that it is in fact something that was in with us and belongs to who we are. So Julia, Hang on. We have another maybe 26 minutes to explore this together. So what do we make of that? Because now we're going to start drilling down just a little bit. Take a deep breath. Incidentally, To take a deep breath, Something I'm always saying, Means to try to realize, You know, I'm trying to follow it. I got stressed. And now I'm looking at the moment through a reaction and the reaction is telling me you don't understand what's going to happen. I don't get it. And so in that moment, What are my choices? I'm being carried along by an identification I'm not aware of with a reaction. And the moment that we're identified with any reaction, We have stepped out of the real world into a psychological sleep world where the choices we are given are produced by the consciousness that has the reaction. We're dead in the water. So we've discussed this before and we're going to bring it in and you understand this, Even if you've not joined me for a material before. For every action, There is what? An equal and opposite reaction. For every action, There is an equal and opposite reaction. For instance, The action of the propulsion of jet fuel, Up goes the rocket because the energies are pushing this way. Up and down occur simultaneously. They do not appear separately. There's no force that moves the rocket, The ship up that exists outside of what is propelling it so that its propulsion is an experience of something moving down, A force down producing a force up carrying the vessel. We understand that and I hope we get completely these opposing forces do not appear other than in the exact same moment. Opposing forces appear in the exact same moment, But with us, We look and react to what we think is opposing us. Believing that the reaction of feeling that something's opposing us is separate from what it is that we see creating that reaction. And we know that that reaction is not divided up into a condition that's separate from the consciousness experiencing it. But rather the reaction is the revelation of the whole of a consciousness that it once is being acted on and at the same time is responding from the content of itself to what is acted upon it. So that the bottom line here is, If you're following me, Is that we really never really see that the sense of any force that seems to be opposing us does not exist without our own unconscious mind dividing it. If a tree falls in the woods, No one's there to hear it, Does it make a sound? What Buddha was saying is that there is a mutual dependency and without the sound wave of that branch falling on the ground, Striking that which resists it and registering those energies, Without that awareness, Without that consciousness, There is no sound because one does not exist without the other. What we blame for a negative reaction does not exist without the consciousness that is resisting it in that exact same moment. The consciousness that resists what is unwanted seems to appear after the moment that it resists. It is not true. They appear at the same time. Let's slow down. I don't want to burn out the ball bearings. There's no way I could ever tell you how significant it is for you to understand what I'm describing. Not because I'm describing it, Because I'm describing to you laws that until we see, Understand and participate in their movement are going to make us outlaws, People who don't understand the world that we live in and live accordingly. So once more, Everybody still tracking with me, Please, Then we'll go on. And you can always come back and listen to this. So here we go. Transition, Release, Not pretend, Become aware of, Well, You know, I got kind of anxious here. I got angry. I got confused. I never noticed that I feel confused. I feel anxious. There's just a sense of this anxiety or confusion, And it is directing what I think about and do accordingly. That's not how it's meant to be. How do we measure the force of any reaction? How do we measure the force of any reaction? For instance, You're with your husband, Your wife. Now you take your vehicle to the dealer to fix a problem. And when you get there, The problem's not there. You know how that goes. How do we measure the force of these reactions? The answer by the intensity of how strongly we judge what we believe has just acted on us. So the intensity of my reaction is determined by the intensity of something in me suddenly feeling like this isn't right. You shouldn't be this way. But it never occurs to me that my certainty about what the source of this conflict is had to come into that moment with me. You didn't create that conflict. You revealed in your action a consciousness that was already filled with tension because it was carrying around all of this residue from moments and other reactions, Choices that didn't resolve the reaction the first time. So we know from our studies that this sense of self is totally conditioned. The sense of self that we identify with when we have a reaction, 100% conditioned. Because without that conditioned part of us, This idea, This belief, This opinion, My social certainty, My standing in my own mind about who I am, Without that fully conditioned part of us that resists anything that challenges it, There's no event for us to react to. Let alone to deny. See it with me. I'm with my boyfriend and he casts a glance, A despairing glance. I'm not thinking to myself, I'm going to get depressed or negative because I caught someone looking at me out of the corner of their eye. I didn't know that I'm already seeing myself in a certain light. And when you don't see me in the light that I have brought with me into the moment, Then suddenly you're the source of darkness. No, You are not the source of darkness. Your action that brings up this reaction is showing me an unconscious level of myself. I don't know that I'm walking around with all the time believing that its response to life is reality and it's not. So if you understand that this sense of self, That this reaction produces 100% conditioned, Then we can go on. Because if we can see that a reaction, As we described at the beginning of this talk, If we can see that a reaction is actually the completion of these forces at play at the moment, A reaction is the completion of these forces. Here comes the sunlight. Here comes the energy of that music and all that it conveys. And the sunlight falls on the leaf, The beauty of the music falls on a corresponding part of our consciousness created to be moved by it. In that moment, We can see those reactions are not separate. They are at play together. And the intersection of those reactions is, In fact, A ceaseless creation that is always being renewed. I see the sunlight come through this foggy gray morning. In that moment, There is a, Ah, Why? Because there is a certain relationship between this love of light and the light that reveals the need for it. In that moment, That sense of self, That energy done, Completed. That's the moment of beauty. Beauty is a relief because we are released from anything that was in conflict the moment before. I hear that music. There is a certain wish to be moved along with it, Because there's parts of me that are in movement themselves, As opposed to the parts of me that lock down when I blame you for some disharmonious moment. So that creation born of the marriage of these reactions, Of what's really just a single reaction, Which I'll talk about tomorrow, If you can join me, We can see that creation is consistently, Constantly being renewed. We can see it. We don't, Can't think it, But we can feel it. We're aware of what above below is the same below means, But you can't describe it unless you write 10, 000 books. And even then you missed the mark. But if these moments where an active force touches a passive body and they're brought together and there is a marriage and a new birth comes out of it, That means that any part of us that meets a moment where instead of something new being revealed and being new being revealed, Doesn't necessarily mean beautiful new being revealed means I realized, I didn't know how attached and identified I was to being treated in a certain way. The creation produces a revelation. The revelation belongs to a new yet in place consciousness meant to receive it. And life is intended to go on as opposed to where we are now, Where you say they do this happens that that stone hits this pond of this personality filled with its ideals, Beliefs, And condition experiences. And that stone. Now there's this ripple of reactions, Not the completion of that reaction, But a corresponding ripples of subsequent reactions, All of which belong to an unconscious nature that doesn't know what to do with the first marriage with the first relationship. And in its ignorance tries to create a way to reconcile what it believes has come into wreck its life. No event is intended created to wreck your life. Events are intended to release you from the illusion of whatever you were identified with and attached to the moment before. Can you see some of this with me? Here's a deer, One of my girls outside, And suddenly I'm feeding them at all. And it's in concert incidentally, All of a sudden they're like this, They're having their food and then boom, Their ears go up like that. Almost like a conductor in a way it is a conductor, Like a, A kind of natural, Great natural mother nature. Conductor boom, They go up like that. Why? Because they have connected to their instinctual parts, Something that absolutely is geared to every sound, Every movement taking place around them that isn't already part of what they know should be there. And just like that, They have this reaction. And that reaction is already connected to a condition nature that will tell them, Take fight or take flight or fight. Although deer rarely fight. So they cannot separate themselves from this instinctual reaction that is telling them something is threatening them because in order for the species to survive, They must somehow escape what is perceived as a threat. We can see this much, But you and I, We at all times have this sudden moment that we're not aware of at all, Where suddenly our attention is called for by something, Listen, That our consciousness sees as stalking us. Not aware of the fact that I'm standing here talking to you, Sitting at home writing or contemplating something. And I hear a newsflash, I get a text, An email, Boom, Just like that. And in that same moment, What happens? The deer has to run because it's required for the survival of the species. But when we feel this kind of fear, Anxiety, It's because we feel in that moment that we are somehow being stalked by some unwanted condition or circumstance. But I'm telling you in that moment that we feel that reaction and the mind starts to run and wash away with these waves of negativity. We are being stalked in that moment by our own conditioned nature. Life does not stalk you. People do not stalk you. Although I might add at some point in time, We have to say, Yes, The world is terribly sick, It's filled with problems. But one man, One woman can use those moments in order to transcend, Not just the nature that feels set upon. But in transcending that level of consciousness helps to change the world that everyone is still feeling stalked by failing to understand. The only thing that stalks me is moments where something I'm identified with is challenged. And I believe it's the world, You, This and them stalking me. No, My own conditioned consciousness creates the circumstances it demands. And when those circumstances aren't met, It feels stalked by some dark force that it says exists when it is the father of those dark forces itself trying to run from its own creations. And in those moments, What happens? Comes this flood, Doesn't there? Have you ever noticed? Like the boy with the thumb in his damn, You know, A little anxious thought followed by an anxious choice, Followed by the conflict that that choice produces with other possible choices. And now I've got a bunch of choices and now I've got a bunch of reactions. And more thoughts and feelings so that a single thought turns into a flood and the flood is filled with the debris of past experiences. So much so that I'm carried away all the time. And, And failing to see, Failing to see what? Let's go back for a moment. There is a story that I've told and I'll go through it ever so briefly. I hope that you've heard it so that I don't have to touch on it too deeply, That we're going to look at more and more deeply so that we can connect everything we're talking about to a new action that isn't connected to the continual ripples of an old reaction, Ensuring that that old sense of self has continuity. There was a young girl, A naturalist. She was somewhere in the Southwest and she decided she wanted to go into some of these beautiful ravines that have carved out of sandstone by flash floods and rains for millennia. Somewhere five miles away, A park ranger in a tower looking around, Aware of the fact that part of his job is to see that no one gets into danger. And part of the danger of this area is the flash floods because there can be a thunderstorm 10 miles away and those waters will be there in no time at all flooding these ravines. So there he is, He's watching and he sees this young woman walk into this ravine. He pans around to the other side. Oh my God, There's a thunderstorm just came up. It won't be but 10 minutes before those waters flood that ravine. So he jumps into his Jeep, Tries to rush as fast as he can to get over and yell down to the girl, Get out of there or get to higher ground. But just when he gets to where she is and she's walking oblivious to any danger and the sudden roar of this flash flood coming through the ravine, He tries to yell down but it's buried out by the sound of the ravine of the waters and he goes, Oh my God, She's dead. He sees and suddenly she comes aware of where she is and he can see her talking to herself. He's thinking she's probably praying because she knows her demise is nigh. But as she's doing that, The floods come and they just go around her. They don't even get her shoes wet. All of the debris, The cactus, The stones, The wood, All the rocks, Just right around her. He runs down, Says, I just saw a miracle. What did, What happened? What happened? How did you do that? He said, Well, She said, I, You know, I was so caught up. I fell asleep. I didn't know where I was, Let alone the possibilities. And then suddenly, Thank heavens, I became aware of the danger, The imminent danger. He says, But that doesn't explain how the waters went by you. She said, Oh, She said, Well, I just said to the waters, You go on without me. You go on without me. That's all I said. Now, I don't have time to explain that, Although I'm going to give you a deeper understanding of it now. In the story, We get physically in a flash flood, In a tidal wave, If you've ever seen these things, What kills most of the people aren't that they drowned, Isn't that they drowned, But that they are crushed, Smashed, Buried by all of the debris, As would be in any flash flood, Moving through the desert. Now, Can we make the connection that we have this reaction and without understanding the truth, The nature of that reaction, It produces what? It produces a flood of thoughts and feelings, Each and every one carrying with it the content of some past, Usually unpleasant experience so that we are suddenly meeting this wave of debris out of the darkness of an unconscious nature that's suddenly being flushed. And we think to ourselves, Oh, My God, What's going to happen to me? But try and see this in nature. Yes, The flood carries the debris by the waters that come to us. But the truth is, When it comes to these reactions, This flood is bubbling up literally from within our own consciousness. It isn't coming at us. It's coming from us. The flood isn't coming at us as in nature. The flood of these painful thoughts and feelings are coming up from the content of our own unconscious nature, A nature that is bubbling up all of the choices, Possibilities, The conflicts and is instantaneously by the perception of that world caught up in the illusion of the opposites that what's happening ought not be. Isn't that the reaction? Well, What does that mean? What's happening ought not be. That means that I've come into the moment knowing what should be. So I come in identified with what should be sound asleep. And what is the energies of the will of the divine? What is comes to transform this nature carrying what should be. But instead of this completion and transformation, What should be looks at what is and it goes, Oh, My God, Look at the flood. Look at all the problems. And in that moment, This powerful sense of self appears. And that sense of self is now separate from what's acting on it. And what does it try to do? That sense of self that is a creation of an unconscious nature, Then tries to create a world in another image in which it can escape the experience of its own perception. Everybody still with me? We have to getting close to the end. I got to keep going. Let's summarize this. When we're picked up and carried off by a wave of any reaction, You name it. What's what's likely for you? Impatience, Regret, A wave of anger, Of anxiety. Some kind of doubt, Some deep past suffering. Here comes the wave. When we're picked up and carried off by that reaction, What are our choices? Our choices as we're carried off by that reaction is how do I get my head above it? Which direction should I swim? What can I grab on to anchor myself? Those are our choices. And those choices are the product of the consciousness that has created from itself everything that's bubbling up and producing this bitterness, This pain, The sense of a life that's broken. So in that moment, These choices that create a sense of control aren't control at all, Are they? More accurately, Our sense of control is because we are, Without knowing it, Being controlled. Controlled by a nature that only has a series of limited responses to something that repeats itself over and over again every time there's a corresponding similar reaction. Now, If you can see this with me, Given, God willing, What we have been quite literally given to understand. I wish I had more time with you. You should join me whenever you can. Given what, What we're given to understand. From where comes understanding? From some new awareness. We don't create that new awareness. We are invited into it so that within that light, We can be given the light of a new understanding that can see through these dark negative reactions. So given what we understand here, God willing, Our task in the face of negative reactions is no longer, As we always do, To try and control the flood, To try to escape the flood, To try to change the nature of everything that's rushing toward us, That we see is rushing toward us. Our task is to begin as best we can to realize that the proper use of anything begins with understanding its purpose. The proper use of anything, Of any energy, Begins with understanding its purpose. So that the difficulty along this path is that it's a path of negation to a great extent, Because at some point, We must begin to negate this sense of ourself that comes out of these reactions, Because we can see that whatever the sense of self is that comes out of that reaction, It gives us a purpose to complete. We do so and we wind up no longer, We wind up with not being free the way it's promised. We begin to see that we need to be suspicious of these reactions that define us, Instead of allowing them, As we are now, To be confined by the choices that come out of them. So that our task is to understand the purpose of a reaction. This isn't too deep. Your inner work will lead you to this. Right now, You're just a reaction. That's all you are. A reaction followed by a thought, Followed by a choice, Followed by some consideration, That in turn produces another reaction. Just this little machine. You are not that reaction. You are that which is created to serve the purpose of using these reactions to create the revelation of this broader nature, This broader understanding that is served by them, Instead of made to serve them in pain. So we need to begin to be suspicious. To, As best we can, Not try to resolve the disturbance, But to understand the nature that is troubled by the reaction. To understand the nature that's troubled by that reaction. I'm not going to try to resolve this disturbance. I want to resolve the nature that's disturbed by it. And the only way I understand and resolve the nature that's disturbed by it is to begin to use the reaction to do what? To observe the nature that's disturbed by it. Because as that starts to take place, Lo and behold, I start to realize the reaction has not come to ruin my life, But to help me transform who and what I have believed myself to be. To let, To allow God, The divine, The Christ, Call it what you will, To allow the movement of these celestial, The logos, These energies, To do what they're intended to do, Which is to consistently bring a new creation into revelation, To make me new. So what's the exercise? I didn't have Kate write this down, But you can. Let no reaction move you until you have seen the whole of its movement within you. Let no reaction move you until you have seen the whole of its movement within you. That means that when all of this stuff starts to bubble up and you feel this flood coming over you, You are not going to identify with those thoughts and feelings. You are going to simply say, You go on without me. I understand you are bubbling up from within me, But this nature that is bubbling up from within me is not I. It is not my true nature. If you will let that reaction reveal this nature that's having it, Then you will have in that moment a new ground. You have a new action that can be taken. But the new action won't be taken by you who is reacting. The new action will be taken by the part of you that can see the nature reacting and how useless it is, How circular it drives you. So that the new reaction will be inseparable from the revelation of the first one. It'll be the completion of one and the birth of another. So that as opposed to being separated from life by these reactions, You'll realize that who and what you are is the ground from out of which these reactions are coming, From out of which they are giving birth to something new. And your experience of yourself and of life will be of this newness. I went on a few minutes longer than I should have. I hope that you've understood some of this. I had Kate post a lot of it. Go back and look at it if you want. I would urge you to do so. There isn't a miracle waiting to happen to you. Your life is a miracle you don't recognize as being yet.