Before I ask Kate for the talk title and the key lesson,
Let me set the stage.
It's a pretty simple stage.
We all know how it feels when we suddenly find ourselves tense or anxious,
Empty,
Whatever it might be.
Maybe because of something that someone said to us.
Something isn't unfolding the way we want it to unfold.
We all know this experience.
It's as common as breathing.
And we also know,
If we're honest,
That in these moments where this takes place,
In the grip of that reaction or that thought,
It seems obvious to us,
Not only what has happened that's producing this sense of self,
But what we are now mandated to do.
What's required of us if we're going to transcend or get through this period of transition that's so difficult.
And as I often say when I'm discussing these things,
It's a phenomena that we are never more sure of who we are than as it is given to us to be negative about the condition that threatens our identity.
In other words,
Somehow or other,
The more we're suffering,
The more real we feel.
And that's a terrible position,
Terrible condition to be in.
And we have no idea what it is that causes this relationship,
This incredible mistaken identity that all of us live from as we are captured by these moments where events challenge who we are and then we think we have to put everything back together again so that we're filled with some kind of fear,
Attention,
Some sense of being alone,
Struggling with life,
You fill in the blanks.
And it never occurs to us,
Because it can't due to the extent of our identification,
That the whole thing that's going on is an illusion.
It just doesn't seem possible that as real as I feel when I'm frustrated or finding fault with someone or with myself,
That the depth and breadth of that negativity could somehow be an illusion and more importantly,
That the sense of self that's being derived from it is equally an illusion.
And that's what we're going to look at.
We're going to look into the nature of this illusion and the possibility we have of stepping out of it and to do so not by trying to change the world that we are in,
Which is always our default action,
But rather by awakening to the parts of us that are responsible for this illusion,
For this sense of separation.
So this material is where do we find this light?
Where do we find this new understanding that goes before us to not just make the crooked places straight,
But to take all of this conflict out of our lives?
So Kate,
Let's bring up the talk title,
And then we'll bring up the key lesson and we'll launch into the material.
Here's the talk title,
Everybody.
Welcome the real light of life and release your worries,
Fears and doubts.
Welcome the real light of life and release your worries,
Fears and doubts.
And let's have the key lesson,
Please.
We must all understand that it takes Kate a moment at the distance she's in.
There it is.
Read along with me.
The real cause of any fear,
Anxiety or dark emotion isn't because of some unwanted condition that appears before our eyes.
It hides behind them.
These dark,
Seemingly animated shadows are temporary creations.
They are cast by a false light of some imagined brighter time to come that even as we identify with it,
Causes us to fear it may not come to pass.
These shadows,
And it's important to understand,
Regardless how real something may feel,
The why of it is a lie.
We look out and we see these conditions,
And we're so sure because of how deeply we feel that worry,
That doubt,
That anger,
That regret,
We're sure that the condition our mind is looking at is the source of that suffering.
We are not looking at the actual condition.
We are looking at something that is being shown to us,
Much in the way a light sits behind an object and that object casts a shadow on a wall.
So is it true when it comes to this part of ourselves that we don't understand,
Looks at life through something that we,
Without knowing it,
We're identified with,
That I don't want this moment to be the way it is,
That I do wish the moment were other than it is,
So that I'm always in a relationship with life as it is unfolding around me,
Failing to see that what I'm actually experiencing is unfolding within me,
And that my experience of life is because of the way I identify with all of this interior movement,
Failing to understand anything at all about the nature of that movement,
What creates it,
What casts these shadows,
And why it is that we don't suspect the shadows aren't real,
But rather fill them with all of these qualities that are fearful,
Anxious,
And worried.
So here's where we're taking off now.
Let's bring up this first paragraph,
If we can,
Kate,
A new relationship with life,
If I'm not catching you off guard.
I want to go paragraph by paragraph.
This is pretty much what I've covered.
We can skip,
If we can,
Katie,
All the way to a new relationship with life.
Sorry,
I covered that part now.
Please be patient with us.
We're trying something new,
Everyone.
I'll start with it.
Where does this new relationship begin?
It begins with recognizing,
As we are,
That all of this pain and fear that we have in these unfolding moments is the expression of a sudden sense of separation.
But what we have to understand,
If we want to be free,
Is that this sense of separation is not real.
It feels real,
But that our freedom is found in not controlling the conditions that we blame for these negative states,
But in seeing the whole of that consciousness that creates the illusion of that separation.
Let's bring up the second paragraph.
All of this is to be followed.
Each time we identify with some reaction,
With some reactive part of ourselves,
And what is this reactive part of ourselves that we identify with?
It's a voice in our head.
It's a feeling that rushes through us.
It's some sudden desire,
I have to have this or I can't stand that.
And in that moment where we are experiencing this identification with this part of ourselves,
We believe that this part of ourselves that is identified with the condition is actually separate from the condition it's identified with.
In other words,
I get angry at you,
And I believe that you are the cause of the anger.
Because all this mind sees as it separates itself,
The experience of itself from the condition,
All it sees and has to justify the way it feels is the condition.
That mind would collapse back into itself if it actually saw for a moment that what it is blaming for its experience is the experience it's giving itself,
Is the identification it has with whatever is passing through that system in the moment.
Next paragraph.
These identities,
This sense of self that is so strong and familiar to us,
They're not fixed.
God,
I know they feel fixed.
Do you not feel fixed when you are locked down into some doubt,
Worry,
Or fear?
But I'm telling you these shadows,
Like any shadow,
Have no substance.
They feel real,
But they're not fixed.
And they do,
If you'll see it,
Constantly shape shift.
Have you ever noticed how the shape of that fear,
That doubt,
All depends on the moment.
First comes up the anxiety because you think you lost your car keys.
And the next moment you realize where you lost those car keys,
And you go to look for them.
So now you know where to go,
And the fear abates.
The shadow becomes one of something that,
Okay,
This is going to work out.
Now I'm identified with feeling okay.
I get to where I go for the keys,
They're not there.
And the shape shifts again.
And now I'm identified with being an idiot.
And I'm thinking to myself,
What a fool I am.
And then I start to find someone to blame.
So that each condition the mind calls up to get it through that moment of conflict creates a subsequent identity.
And each and one of these identities feel real,
But they are not.
They shape shift according to whatever has stirred them,
Cast them on the screen of our consciousness.
They are temporary mental and emotional patterns,
Just like a shadow is a pattern.
But the point being to the first part of this talk,
They are shadows that are cast by a kind of light that we can't see.
They're cast by a kind of light that we can't see,
That sits behind the appearance of these identities,
Of these feelings and fears that so permeate us in the moment they do.
And yet,
Next line,
Katie,
Please.
Because they feel so familiar to us,
We take them to be real.
Isn't it extraordinary how dark a man or a woman can feel because all they see at the moment are the walls of whatever the condition is they blame for their woe?
The shadows that move across that mind that prove to that mind that is casting them that not only is that pain real,
It is inescapable.
And the whole of this talk is to prove to you that those shadows do not need to be escaped.
The conditions do not need to be changed according to the mind that sees them as the source of conflict.
What we must do is awaken from this temptation,
From this identification with them.
Let's bring up the next paragraph,
Katie,
Please.
What we don't yet realize is every time one of these patterns,
One of these shadows is triggered,
That we become mechanically,
Habitually identified with some conditioned false sense of self so familiar to us,
But a sense of self that includes and relies,
In order to exist,
On a host of imagined enemies or problems,
The past it didn't escape,
The future it fears,
All of these things,
These images loom before our eyes and each image exists because it was already present in this nature and now I look at my own projection of a time to come or a past I can't escape and this nature resists and rejects what it looks at that it has cast on the shadow of the mind itself,
And that's it.
And as all of this unfolds in the dark of us and we identify with this condition,
Continuing set of reactions,
We are convinced that whatever we see is real.
There's no question.
It's there.
I'm here.
I have to do something to close the distance between whatever is causing this pain,
Change you,
Change myself,
Do something.
And at that moment,
Because of the depth of whatever is going on in this dark nature,
We say,
OK,
I've got to go into action.
You know what that's like.
Oh,
My God.
I've got to get into a fight with somebody.
I have to fix this situation.
I've got to control these people,
These circumstances that are spinning out of control.
And I must do these things.
I must take this action to do what?
To ensure that the freedom I feel has been taken from me will be given back,
Restored,
So that then I'll have the well-being I believe I lost when my own reaction to a moment produced what it felt like,
A reality that was spinning out of control.
When the only thing,
Gosh,
I wish this was,
I could make,
The only thing that's out of control in that moment is an experience produced by an unconscious mind that we are so conditioned to identify with,
We don't realize it is not we who are having that experience.
It is an experience having us.
It is not we having that experience.
It is an experience produced by this unconscious mind creating us in that moment,
By the way,
In its own image.
And none of this perception is real.
None of this perception is real.
Just imagine for a moment,
What if that's true?
Next paragraph,
Katie.
This sense of self that we experience in these moments is not our true nature.
It feels real and it's all we pretty much know when suddenly we're negative.
But it's a mental formation like Plato's allegory of the caves where the whole of humanity looks at these shadows dancing on the wall cast by a light behind them so that their own movements generate these shadows and they believe the shadows are themselves.
We believe because it's so inculcated in us that these fears that we feel are us.
We feel,
We're so sure that this emptiness that we feel is us because there's the shadow and the shadow is endowed with everything brought forward from the past that populates the shadows with all of these conditioned memories,
Everything that colors them the way it does.
But it is not our true nature.
It's a kind of shadow,
An echo that's animated by the condition the mind reacts to.
Next paragraph.
And when we,
As we inevitably do,
And this is your work,
This is my work,
As we inevitably identify because how familiar these feelings are,
I'm lost,
I'm dead in the water,
There's no hope.
What an idiot I am.
You know the thoughts and the feelings that come with them.
When we identify with these thoughts and feelings,
These shadows,
We fall into an immediate sense of separation.
The sense of separation,
What?
Not just that we are other than the condition that now we have to figure out how to control.
People are doing this,
They're not doing that.
But this separation is within ourselves because we are separate in that moment,
Listen,
From a nature that is creating at once both the condition that it creates through interpreting a reaction and then the sense of self that believes itself to be separate from its own reaction.
Let me say it again.
A sense of self that believes it is separate from its own reaction.
You are not separate from your reactions and even when you deny the reaction or try to bury it or change it,
Even then you're not separate from the reaction.
All you are is identified with a new reaction that it creates the illusion of being other than this experience you don't want.
I can't tell you how important that idea is.
So then,
Next paragraph if we can go on.
Read along with me.
Finding ourselves in this inner conflict and we know what that's like.
The task is abundantly clear.
I'm sitting at home,
I'm alone,
I'm depressed,
I'm empty.
I have to figure out what to do.
I can't go on like this.
This is hell.
And as the mind literally casts the shadows of these demons of some dark moment to come or that we've yet to escape,
Then that same mind projecting these shadows then tries to figure out how to protect itself from what it has cast from itself on the walls,
So to speak,
Of the mind.
We have to find some way to protect ourselves.
We imagine there is something or someone to fear.
We're always caught up in that.
What about this?
What about that?
And then once the mind settles on the source of this dark pattern,
This shadow,
Once it's clear that it knows what's creating the sense of self it doesn't want,
Now it has plans.
Now it knows exactly what to do.
Just stay tuned,
Kathleen.
I'm working on this.
If you listen,
Instead of becoming anxious about how to apply.
.
.
See,
That's the problem,
Kathleen,
And everybody.
I don't want to break into my own talk.
You want to get rid of a feeling that only exists for you as it does in the form of pain that it does because you don't want it.
And you don't want it because you believe that feeling is you.
It is not.
It belongs to an old nature.
One that,
By the way,
Is everybody's old nature filled with parallel painful thoughts and feelings that everybody experiences and that everybody hides from and believes they can hide from it,
Never escaping the fact that the consciousness keeps creating the very thing it doesn't want to experience.
So stay tuned,
Kathleen.
What we don't see in these moments.
.
.
The next paragraph,
Katie,
Please.
But what we don't see,
Kathleen,
Is that it's the very identification with these feelings that we don't want,
With these fears and these worries that produces the illusion that something needs to be fixed.
I don't know why it takes so long to see it.
There's never a me that hates my life until there's a life I hate.
There's never a me that wishes the moment were other than it is until I'm looking at a moment that shouldn't be that way.
They appear together.
It seems the moment creates the sense of self.
There is no such sense of self without the condition the mind has created and projected and then identifies with and then tries to figure out how to save itself from its own shadow.
Next paragraph,
Please,
Katie.
This false self cannot see the role it plays in its own suffering.
It sees life through a fractured lens.
It literally divides the world up into me and you who don't understand me,
Into you and me who absolutely have nothing in common because you believe this and I believe that.
So that we are separated,
Not in real life,
But by a mind that separates itself out from the life it is in so that it can have a familiar sense of self regardless how much suffering that sense of self brings with it and,
Strangely enough,
To validate itself as a victim of one thing or another.
And it sustains that illusion by the perpetuation of a series of subsequent reactions that validate the reality it's now stuck in.
You're not stuck.
What you are is asleep.
And we are never more asleep than when we are negative and resisting what our mind is pointing to as the source of our conflict and fear.
What we need to do is wake up and see at the same time that the condition we fear doesn't exist without the self that has decided that condition is a threat to what?
To what it's clinging to.
And what is it clinging to?
What it believes it has to be to be free.
So the very source of its fear can't be separated from its ideal image of freedom.
I hope you're following this.
I have to keep going.
Next paragraph.
But the truth is we are not separate from life.
We are not separate no matter how deep that suffering runs when we're sitting at home and all we see is hopelessness.
How can I feel hopeless unless my mind is looking at something that it has decided is hopeless given its demands that life fill it with what it imagines will make it free.
So the hopeless self doesn't exist without a mind that has produced the image of why life is hopeless.
And then we sit there and bounce back and forth between how hopeless it is out there,
What do I do?
And then the horrible feeling of feeling hopeless and feeling hopeless drives me to go back and look outside again to try to change the conditions and it's like a ping pong like that game of pong.
That's all it is.
The mind bouncing back and forth between the thinker that doesn't want to experience itself and the thoughts it's giving itself that it's rejecting.
Are you following this?
We have another 10 minutes to go.
So we're looking at this illusion that we don't know is an illusion.
Let's look more deeply.
The truth is,
Let's bring up the next paragraph,
Kate,
So everybody can follow to some extent.
The truth is we are not separate.
This division is not natural.
This division is not natural.
It's learned.
I was suddenly filled with a very powerful sense of being a child,
Remembering my childhood,
Seeing my father drink to rid himself of the fear of losing a business and not knowing as a child that his fear of losing a business did not prove that he was a man without worth the way his own mind castigated him and cast him into the hell of alcoholism.
Looking at the adults,
Looking at my friends and family,
Every last one of them,
And it's true of all of us,
Selling our soul for a nickel,
Punishing people because they aren't agreeing with us.
We're not punishing them because they're not agreeing with us.
We punish them because whatever they're doing is threatening some precious identity we have.
And the more that we see them as the threat,
The more separated we are from having the possibility of realizing that if it weren't for our dependency upon this person to supply a specific sense of self,
If it weren't for that dependency,
There'd be no wish to punish anybody.
Imagine withholding something from someone because you're angry at them.
Parents do it with their children.
Here's a parent and the child makes them mad.
Where does the love go?
It's gone.
Why?
Because now the child is this.
It's creating this conflict in me.
I have to control the child.
And the same parallel holds true personally.
Here's this reaction I have.
I have to control this reaction or I'm going to lose this image of myself as someone who doesn't respond to life in this painful way.
And on and on it goes.
And we don't see it's learned,
It's conditioned,
It runs through the core of this unconscious nature that is humanity at this point in time.
But we can be awakened.
We can unlearn.
And unlearning does not mean adding new knowledge.
It means seeing where what we call our understanding is not the way out but it is part of what is keeping us locked into this illusion of a separate self.
But we have to see it in its entirety.
Bring up the next paragraph,
Katie.
Transition.
To begin this transformation we have to become aware of the entire false structure of self.
This is not a complicated condition.
It's not like learning chemistry.
It's not higher math.
A person understands the entire system of something by entering into it and observing it.
You cannot learn about an entire system when one part of you selects that part of the system as the source of your pain or that part of the system as the solution to it.
There's no learning there.
There's just bouncing back and forth creating the illusion of a self that's separate from whatever the problem is it blames for its pain.
So if we're going to transcend.
.
.
If we're going to move past these images that we hold of ourselves then we're going to have to learn to see our dependency upon them because it is our dependency on these images that defines us.
And it is this defining nature that is what is defiling our possibility as a human being to know something of the divine.
Next paragraph.
These inner constructs and can you see at this point with me that literally you said this you didn't do that she will not be that way he should.
.
.
And in that moment that reaction that cannot exist with the prior set of desires a prior idea so it is the idea that I have come into that moment with that I'm identified with that's what's threatened not me the idea that I shouldn't feel this way that's what's threatened when suddenly I can't feel anything other than this way so it is the idea that I'm identified with that is threatened and each one of these ideas is forever changing its shape according to the condition that gives rise to that reaction in that unconscious nature so that I'm forever yes I'm forever looking for myself instead of being myself and I'm afraid of being myself because to be myself means I can no longer look for a self other than the one I don't want to be in this moment so an aspirant has to literally go through recognizing in a kind of dark night of the soul that the emptiness they avoid is the emptiness they experience because the emptiness they avoid is this mind measuring the moment according to what it's meant to be full of and it's not full of this spiritual delight this joy,
This nirvana it's not full of money it's not full of sex it's not full of all the things it's supposed to be full of instead I'm full of this misery I'm full of my anger I'm full of the past I can't get rid of it and of course it's not always like that it vacillates and that's the point so that every one of these vacillations appears either a new victim or the new idea of someone who's going to have a victory to get past what amounts to an illusion and you can't conquer an illusion you can't slay a shadow which means you can't conquer the sense of self that's derived from the illusion let alone the shadow self that is constantly being created by its appearance so these inner constructs they constantly change their shape and each and every one as it does feels so real that it is essentially just that's me when I'm anxious and rushing I have no part of me that says you know what you don't need to rush when I'm lonely and empty I have no part of me that says you know what guy this loneliness and this emptiness why are you spending all of your time looking at and experiencing the very thing that the more you look at it the more you experience it that mind cannot say that to us because it requires separation in order for it to exist as someone or something that will one day be free when at last it finds this unity it imagines and the more unity it imagines the more divided it is from life that seems to threaten that image it has created so these constructs are shape shifters let's bring up the next paragraph they are not fixed this may be the most difficult lesson what fixes these shadows is our resistance to their appearance and the sense of self that's derived from not wanting to be what we're experiencing in that moment I don't know what else to do when I'm full of dread or doubt other than to not want that which is the sense of myself or other than to try to figure out what to do to get rid of what I blame for this bitterness or anger so though we cannot see it it bounces back and forth this divided mind is forever fixated on an experience it doesn't want or what it blames for that experience outside of itself so for this nature inner and outer are separate but inner and outer are not separate the inner determines the outer as above so below as within so without not separate but our mind creates the illusion of this separation so that it can have something to occupy itself with and see to its future that the more it imagines it the more fearful it won't come to pass as imagined bring up the next paragraph please Kate when we begin to see our identification with these reaction born identities with our proclivity the temptation to identify with whatever that movement is that negativity whatever that thought is as we begin to see how our identification with these patterns again they're patterns oh yeah I wish I had more time is a pattern something by itself to this mind it is but there's no pattern without all of the elements the constituent parts responsible for that pattern and not just responsible for the pattern as it appears but for the movement of the pattern but we see the thing we see this pattern of a self as a real self because something in us will identify with one part or another of that pattern and say that's it and then we try to resist or change that pattern that reactive nature that identity and then I however long it takes at some point a person begins to realize you know what I've been struggling my entire existence with this unwanted feeling maybe it's not the same feeling maybe when I was young it was the feeling of being inadequate so the plan was to make myself a billionaire I made some money now I have all this property but now the fear isn't of being inadequate the fear is something taking away what has made me feel adequate and what we don't see is the pattern remains in place because it's constantly being reproduced in some new form by an unconscious nature that requires the illusion of a me that is separate from the world and life that I'm in the solution lies within another kind of light we see the world as Saint Paul said through a glass darkly so that when we begin to finally see our identification it is in the very seeing of the identification in the awareness of how this pattern isn't just produced but recreated and how we reincarnate the same character all the time just under different circumstances then it begins to break down not because we're breaking it down but because our consciousness will no longer participate in its own imprisonment because it recognizes what it is doing unattended and it realizes that the more it can attend to its own proclivity to identify with these negative states with these patterns and give reality to them the more it is released from that relationship with that nature next paragraph so the truth is what we're looking at here is there is no separation between in quotes you and me no separation between this moment that I don't want that I blame for my worry and the experience of that condition they are not separate we have met life forever in this illusion that somehow or other what we see as responsible for our reality is other than the nature that creates that reality and hands it to us unquestioned and we unquestioning it there is no division between us and this greater life this greater light that can reveal to us the truth of this unity the truth of God's life the truth of the light of Christ call it however you will that alone makes the crooked places straight because we don't walk down that path to begin with we don't follow that plan to bring an end to our pain because we understand the pain we're in can't be separated from the last path we followed the last plan we believed would save us next paragraph Samia,
I'm answering why are there conflicts?
Yes,
Pure ignorance but not ignorance to judge ourselves for the ignorance of an unconscious nature that would rather remain asleep and fight with the shadows in its dreams than have to wake up by the light of life and then give itself up I don't want to give up who I am everything about me that I don't want I say I want to get rid of that but I'm going to keep these parts of myself these are the good parts of myself and so help me God one day you'll see that what you call the good parts of yourself are there to punish you every time something reveals that you are not the goodness that you have called yourself that you are not the strength that you have pretended to have and how many times does life have to completely prove that to us before we start to suspect we're not the victim of an uncaring world we're the victim of a consciousness that doesn't understand itself and that keeps creating a world that it can finally be free in and that it imprisons itself with everything it creates in its own image the false self cannot bring an end to its own suffering why?
Because it's the source of that suffering next paragraph but we're not bound to it this is key we are not bound to that false nature it feels like we are we're not its prisoner can you be made the prisoner of a shadow?
Or am I a captive of my identification with what my mind tells me that shadow is and what I must do about it only this kind of seeing if we can get the rest up Kate only this kind of seeing that belongs to the light of a higher awareness that's the beginning of freedom not the destruction the slaying of the shadow but of seeing the only reason the shadow has the power it does is because we identify with it thinking somehow or other that is I it is not I this light of higher awareness is the beginning of this freedom and that freedom is the recognition the realization in real time even as all of those shadows are moving across and through this consciousness that there's no distance between ourselves and the divine that there's no journey to make from who I am to what I want to be that the whole idea of becoming belongs to a mind that is separate from the world that it's in only the willingness which you must develop to stand in the light of the moment and see all that we've described that we have never really been apart from this life that we're in only that divine light can show us there is a world where no fear,
Worry,
Or doubt can dwell that's the work I went on a little bit longer than I ordinarily would I hope that posting it the way we did helped you see it a little more I know it'll be there when it goes back up on our website and on Insight Timer for you to re-examine God did not put the spirit of fear in you one day those words will have meaning they'll have meaning because you'll see the fear appear in you and you'll understand that what has put that fear in you belongs to something that only wants to ensure that you serve it in perpetuity in pain and that that is not who you are and it is not who you wish to be change your understanding you change what you see change what you see you change what you experience
