We very rarely have what I would call a full awareness of ourselves because our attention that doesn't properly belong to us is so easily captured by any condition or circumstance that challenges who and what we have imagined ourselves to be and who and what and where it is that we think we have to do and arrive at in order to be a whole human being.
So let me just start by bringing you into what it is that I'm going to cover with you.
I have two,
Possibly three stories.
It depends how far along we get as we examine the material.
The topic is how to rise above the dead weight of the past,
And I want to show you something about this weight,
But I'll begin by asking you,
All of you,
First and most certainly we can all feel a certain weight,
W-E-I-G-H-T,
A heavy spirit,
A prevailing negative state,
A fear,
Some kind of worry that seems to travel with us from relationship to relationship.
And I want just at the outset to make a simple point that I intend to cover in much greater depth tomorrow.
I hope you'll join me on Sunday when I give my usual two free streaming talks a week.
You can find out about that at my website or I think right here in the author profile.
We don't understand that there is in every ounce of unseen tension in any moment of fear,
The revisitation of regrets.
We don't see that these negative states are inseparable from a certain kind of resistance.
And not only do we not realize why we have this resistance to the moment that we do,
But that the resistance is a psychological weight.
Just see it with me.
If you take your left hand and you push your right hand against it and you resist your own hands by pushing against them,
Kind of like an isometric exercise,
In that resistance is opposition.
That's what resistance is,
Is opposition.
And opposition has conflict,
Opposition,
Conflict,
All of that.
As you push,
It may not occur to you that pushing,
Meaning wanting,
Driving,
Demanding expectation that these forms of psychological reaction are born of and give rise to a certain resistance that produces in us a certain sense of weight,
Heaviness.
And that the more we struggle,
As we always do,
To do what?
To throw off that weight,
To get rid of that burden that we're feeling that we believe is produced by something outside of us.
The more we struggle with what seems to oppose us,
Believing that that's how we are going to relieve ourselves of that weight,
The more we are actually creating it.
So we need to understand that we need to move away from this psychology that is always looking to find relief from this psychological weight,
This tension,
This anxiety,
And begin to think in terms of being released from.
Not relief from,
But resistance from.
Not resistance from,
But relief from.
Relief from what?
The consciousness that creates it.
Let me get into a couple of these stories so that I can take what may be difficult to understand like this,
It becomes much simpler for us to do.
We've all heard,
I imagine we've all heard this story,
The Buddhist story,
About a couple of monks.
They were making their way,
A certain journey that they take from temple to temple.
And they came across the two monks,
The master,
A woman waiting by a river.
Ever so quickly,
The woman asked the monks if one of them would carry her piggyback across the water.
And one of the monks had this immense reaction,
Well,
You know,
We're pure.
We don't touch women,
Blah,
Blah,
Blah.
And the other one said,
No problem,
And carried the woman across the water.
Now they went on for another couple of miles by themselves,
The two monks and the master,
While the whole time the one monk who would not pick up the woman was mumbling to himself,
Complaining.
And finally,
The master turns and says,
What's going on with you?
And he says,
Well,
You know,
We weren't supposed to,
That's not what we're supposed to do.
And the monk that carried the woman said,
You don't understand,
I set that woman down five miles ago,
You're still carrying her.
Pretty simple story.
But I mean,
Is the monk who's complaining and caught up in this conflict,
Which he blames on the circumstance,
Is he actually still carrying that woman?
What is that man,
That monk,
Still carrying?
And the answer is,
He's still carrying the resistance born out of a thought that he is identified with,
That instead of it being confirmed by the actions or the master's comment,
He can't set it down.
Why can't he set that thought down?
Why can't he set the judgment down,
For instance?
Because his identity is derived from it.
So that you cannot separate his sense of self,
Of superiority,
From the resistance to the moment produced by that judgment that gives him a very distinct sense of himself.
And that's what he can't put down.
The conflict drives the blame,
The judgment,
The blame,
The judgment produces more conflict.
Can you understand this much with me?
I'll tell you what,
Let me go and tell you another story that really you would never think it directly,
But there was this amazing movie,
Actually it was a book called Remains of the Day.
It was written by this Kaju Ishiguro,
Kaju Ishiguro,
He was a British author and the film was made in 1993,
Starring Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson.
Now the movie was brilliant because it was a brilliant explanation and exhibition of a certain psychological sickness that we are examining here in this material we're covering today,
That Anthony Hopkins,
Who played this very reserved butler,
Serving a nobleman who was a Nazi sympathizer,
And the fact that he could never open his heart to one of the women who worked in that house,
But then was fired.
He could never give himself to Emma Thompson,
Nor could he walk away from recognizing that his employer was a Nazi sympathizer.
And why couldn't he do this?
This is why the movie was called The Remains of the Day,
Not just because something in his conditioning,
Some pain,
Some fear from the past,
Whatever,
Would not let him love so that every time the moment came,
And it came multiple times in the movie,
That he could,
You could feel it,
You could go,
Come on,
Anthony,
His name was Stevens in the film,
Come on man,
She's waiting,
Love is waiting,
Give yourself,
He couldn't do it.
And not only couldn't he do it,
But he couldn't walk away from the prestige of being Stevens,
Who like his father,
Served this nobleman for generations,
Because of the identity derived of being someone special in the service of this person,
Although he was full of conflict,
Not just because he couldn't open his heart to Emma,
But because he knew he was serving something he shouldn't be served.
So what was all of that about?
What was that story,
That Buddha story about the man?
Who was the carrier of that pain when the one who carried the woman set her down?
Who and what is the carrier of this past that serves as it does in a terrible way to produce all of this pain and all of this,
The weight,
Yes,
The remains of the day,
That which was never completed in the past,
Never understood,
Let alone the lesson learned and outgrown that consciousness responsible for it.
So that instead,
That level of consciousness continues through life,
Bringing with it the remains of the day,
Bringing with it these identities and these demands and these expectations,
All of which from which is derived a sense of self.
Now I want to look at who or what is this Stevens within us,
This servant to the past,
The pain born out of the past.
Oh dear.
This is technology.
At least we have the time together.
So everybody's following.
If you heard the story about Buddha and then the remains of the day and Stevens,
The butler,
He was himself a captive of the weight of his own past.
Because everything that took place in his past,
Whatever the rejections were,
Whatever the pain,
Whatever the need to be seen as someone special,
All of that is carried forward in an unconscious nature that then essentially creates for us the experience of the moment in the present because it is forever trying to get whatever it has brought forward with it from the past to meet or match or exceed its own expectations.
And there's great conflict in that,
Not to mention the fact that Stevens,
The butler,
Could never open his heart and that he served something against his own better judgment because something in him thought it was more important.
Something from his past wanting to be important made him do and act against himself for continuing that sense of self in spite of the suffering and the conflict inherent in being set against our own,
My own best interests.
Here's the next story.
I often use this image of an old man as being someone who is witnessing,
Watching,
Sitting someplace and a story seems to unwind around him and he often sits there nodding,
Shaking his head no until the hero of the story finally asks why.
And then we get the lesson because the old man represents Sophia,
The female aspect of wisdom and that can see what the unsuspecting person in the story can't.
And so he serves as not just a foil,
But ultimately the one who expresses the way in which freedom is obtained by the person unconsciously serving what amounts to what has been carried over from the past.
This is the key.
So he's sitting there by the bank of a river and comes struggling up.
You can hear it,
Another man and he's got bags stacked on his back and he's dragging bags behind him and he's just dripping with sweat.
And he walks around the bend,
He sees the old man and he looks over at the river in the shade.
Do you mind if I sit down with you?
I'm pretty worn out and the old man says,
No problem at all.
I have some apples and some cheese.
You're welcome to share it with me.
After a moment of two,
The old man says,
Boy,
That's a lot of baggage you're carrying on your back.
And the traveler says,
You don't have to tell me.
It's getting harder and harder.
And to tell you the truth,
I'm beginning to feel like I don't know what I'm going to do because the weight of all of this that I'm carrying,
It's breaking me down.
I don't know what I'm going to do.
I feel like I'm starting to feel like I can't carry it anymore.
The old man says,
Yeah,
I can see why.
That kind of ends the conversation for a moment,
A slice of apple,
A little piece of cheese and then the old man,
Because he knows exactly what's going on.
You know,
There's a part of you that knows exactly what is going on every instant of your life.
And when I say it knows what's going on,
It's not thinking about what's going on.
It is the witness to,
It is seeing exactly what is transpiring,
Not just within you,
But what is bringing up within you,
What it does and the intention,
The purpose of the relationship between what is acting on you and what is being acted on.
It is perfect wisdom.
It is a light that dwelleth in the darkness that the darkness knoweth not.
It is what goes before you to make the crooked places straight.
So finally the old man kind of breaks,
Says,
Well,
Let me ask you a question if you don't mind a little casual conversation.
No,
I don't kind of enjoy it.
He said,
Well,
Where are you going?
And with that,
The traveler,
The weary traveler goes,
You know,
That's the fly in the ointment,
He said.
I was pretty sure I knew.
In fact,
I've been pretty sure I knew a whole bunch of times exactly where I was going,
But I've come upon those places that I was traveling to more times than I can count that I had seen as being what I needed.
But each time I got there,
He said,
This is hard to say.
I came to see that no matter what,
It wasn't just quite right.
And so I packed up again and moved along.
And then he said,
And honestly,
Each time I,
Each time I packed up,
I had to pack up the stuff that I had acquired in that place because I might need it where I'm going.
And so that's why you see more and more bags.
The old man said,
So to make sure I understand you,
You kept getting more and more bags each time that you felt like you had to travel to another place so that you could have with you what you might need there.
Yeah,
The weary travel,
That's pretty much it.
He said,
And quietly,
Listen,
Quietly already picking up another bag because he was feeling judged.
He said,
But you have to understand none of this that I'm carrying with me is unnecessary.
It's all necessary.
Because now instead of kind of being on the side of realizing this is a lot of weight,
Now he's proud and protective of the very thing that he is exhausted by and can't wait to put down at that bend in the river.
So the old man says,
Well,
Kind of reading into what you're saying,
And I'm not prying if you want to end this conversation,
End at any time.
By the way,
I say that to all of my students.
You don't like what you're hearing,
You're done.
But if you want to hear a little bit about why it is that you have all of this tension,
Anxiety,
And the weight of this self,
Keep listening,
Keep studying,
Keep working to learn.
The old man says,
Well,
Look,
I get it.
They're very nice bags.
But why this long face?
What's this despair that I can sense?
If nothing else,
This protectiveness.
When you're saying on one hand,
You feel the need to protect it,
But it's also a source of pain.
The traveler measuring the old man can see he's not being judgmental.
Traveler says,
Well,
If I'm completely honest,
I'm beginning to think,
Just beginning,
That maybe I don't know exactly where and what I'm looking for.
And that's kind of to bother me because not only am I unsure of where it is that I want to get to,
Because I've reached that a bunch of times,
I don't even know how to get there anymore.
The old man says,
Well,
Let me,
So you're saying that you're not sure exactly where the place is you're looking for,
And because you're not sure,
You're really not sure how to get there.
The old man said,
If you want to hear it,
I think I see a solution to your suffering.
Really?
I'm resisting again.
Really?
But he wasn't enough pain to ask.
What's that?
Please tell me the solution.
The old man said,
Well,
If in fact,
You're not sure where you're going,
Let alone how to get there,
Maybe,
Just maybe,
You don't need all of that baggage.
In fact,
Finishing his thought,
The very weight that you feel compelled to carry,
It may be the very reason why you're looking for a place to set it all down.
Why not just set it down now?
You have been given by the divine the right and the awareness,
And they are a singularity,
The wisdom and the capacity to act from it that is not in thought,
To drop any moment that you become conscious of it.
The weight of any one of these bags filled with thoughts and their corresponding identities that don't exist without what they're carrying,
Let alone the sense of conflict that's produced every time that thought comes into the present moment and is in conflict with anything that challenges that image,
That idea,
That belief,
Or for that matter,
That identity.
Now let's make a transition.
We never think to ourselves that we are carriers in the literal sense of the word,
Psychologically,
Physically,
And even as a form of disease,
That we are carriers of the unrequited moments in our life.
Let me clarify.
What does that mean,
Carriers of the unrequited moment?
Do you ever snap at somebody because you feel like they don't understand you?
Where does that pressure and the relief of it,
The release of it through that negative reaction,
Where does that come from?
The remains of the day,
The remains of the unrequited moment.
Someone says or does something and you feel like it's challenging you,
Challenging whatever rule it is that they don't know they're supposed to live by that says you're entitled to X,
Y,
And Z.
Something happens in the world around you.
It triggers something inside of you.
And the next thing you know,
You're up in arms.
You're going to go straighten this out.
You're going to fix them.
You're going to save the world.
Why?
What is it that has produced that moment that brings up that sudden surge of negativity?
And what we're looking at here is that without knowing it,
We have come into that moment carrying a host of ideas,
Images,
Beliefs about ourselves,
About the world,
That for our identification with them and the demand that nothing threatened that identity sets us at odds with anything that challenges that moment.
Now let's go slow because this is incredibly subtle.
Think of all the unrequited moments in your life.
And most of us can only come up with the big stuff.
If I have time,
I want to show you something staggering.
These unrequited moments,
That argument you had with your husband or wife that set the stage for the divorce,
The disappointment because somebody else got the job or that you lost what you lost when you could have been,
I could have been champ.
The fears from the past,
This person broke your heart and how that is infected.
And you become a carrier of that fear in every relationship you have,
Just like Stevens and remains of the day.
So that it's impossible,
Seemingly inconceivable to meet the moment with an open heart for fear of what might happen to you,
A fear that came with you into that moment.
That is not your fear.
That is not your disappointment.
That is not your resentment.
And yet that its presence in this psychological body produces an endless state of comparing what is new and happening with and in us.
So that whatever it is that has come to us,
And by the way,
To help release us from this unconscious state of carrying all of these unseen bags filled with all of the broken moments in our life that we didn't know what to do with then.
And so they have been stored away.
This consciousness not changed,
But made more and more concrete,
Brings with it and brings with it and brings with it.
Another quick story,
A family sitting down and having a family dinner.
And there's,
I don't know if you can imagine a life without an argument.
A life without being picked up and carried off with the pain of some conflict that you've blamed on someone or something outside of you.
Never knowing that the only reason you oppose that moment and creates the unwanted experience that it does is because you came into that moment with the remains of the day,
With the unrequited past that instead of being liberated from what is revealed and intended to be released by the light of God,
Becomes more and more congealed.
And you more and more the captive of the reactions produced by that sudden resistance.
Here's this argument at the dinner table,
Mom and dad having an argument.
And the kids have watched this and God helped them.
They've become,
They're conditioned to believe that this is how human beings live.
This is the way in which we're meant to interact with each other.
One trying to overcome the other.
You know what?
Every human being tries to overcome another human being.
An unconscious nature that is the same in both human beings wants to be the one who is the king of the hill,
The queen of the top.
And the struggle is intense and constant because it is inherent in a consciousness set against itself that believes it can set itself down when it finally gets to the place it is imagined will bring it peace.
And everything that nature imagines is yet another bag that it carries with it,
Trying to figure out what to do when something suddenly makes it evident that that luggage,
That baggage cannot deliver you to freedom from that consciousness.
So the father sitting there suffering finally gets up and walks away from the dinner table.
You've seen this walk away from a fight,
But for the first time,
Because the boy is actually awakening by the grace and he sees what looks like his father.
No one else sees it.
It looks like his father's got something slung over his shoulder,
Like a bag of some kind.
He says,
What is that?
Dad walks up,
Slams the door.
Nobody wants to follow a negative person,
But the boy,
God bless him,
Is curious and he follows his father and he walks and he sees his father go through the house to a certain place where he's been forbidden to go.
He pulls out a key,
The father does,
Opens the door,
Walks through the door,
And the boy follows him.
And when the father walks through the boy,
Walks through the door,
The boy's amazed.
Have you ever seen those stories where,
You know,
The treasure is seemingly hidden in this hollow tree and you go inside the hollow tree to claim the treasure and suddenly you're an entire new world,
A kingdom.
Well the father walks through the door and the boy's stunned.
There's a hallway with door after door after doorway.
How could that be in the house?
And he follows the father further and the father opens one of the doors and seems to throw into that room whatever it was he was carrying over his shoulder.
And the boy walks over and he looks in the room.
His dad's stunned that he's there.
And inside of that room,
And he can only surmise all the other rooms are exactly the same,
There's this squirming mass of dark objects,
Misshapen forms,
Writhing.
And he says to his father,
God,
What is that?
Father says,
You weren't supposed to see that.
But I have.
You're looking at the remains of all the things in my life that I have yet to finish.
But why would you keep coming here?
It's horrible.
He said,
I feel compelled to keep coming here because I think to myself,
If I can organize all of this,
I'll finally be free.
If I could just finally organize this confusion,
If I could just finally organize this regret,
This agony over what you did or they didn't do,
If I could just get it all in its right place,
I could set down the bags because I will finally have arrived at the freedom I've imagined in a time and place I've imagined.
There is no freedom in a time or place that any human being will ever imagine.
Because it is the imagined time and place that produces the conflict with what is timeless has brought into the place where you are.
And that sudden resistance to the appearance of something that doesn't fit what it is that you have imagined will bring you freedom produces that resistance and that tension and that anxiety.
And then the struggle,
The opposition to what seems to be the condition exacerbates the sense of weight and the need to get free of it.
When what is really being struggled with is not the moment,
But the nature in us unconsciously challenging the moment because it doesn't complete or validate what that false identity,
This unconscious nature never stops carrying so that it can never come to an end of its conflict and it can keep its sense of self in place literally forever reincarnating itself.
Isn't that what the monk who couldn't put down the thought,
The torment of the thought?
Isn't that exactly what he was going through?
The reincarnation of his righteous religious nature.
This is what we're looking at together.
Now I got to keep going.
Can you see it?
Simple now,
Simpler.
You go into the bank,
You go to the doctor,
You have a glass of wine with a friend and one way or the other,
You walk into that office,
You walk into the bank and you want to do your business.
You're checking out at a grocery store and for some reason the cashier looks at you with a little doubt and ask to see your driver's license.
I remember this personally.
You don't know who I am?
You can't see the utter honesty,
The nobility in this face that you need me to validate to you,
You who are a cashier,
Who I am?
Are you kidding me?
Fill in the blank.
And it's the moment doesn't end there,
Does it?
All the way out pushing that cart,
All the way out looking at your checkbook when you start to reconcile what you did all along,
Thought the remains of the moment,
Talking about this and that and judging and having reactions to what it is judged,
Failing to see that what it is judging doesn't exist without the remains of some identity that believes it should never be questioned by anyone.
And what is all of that thought trying to do?
Trying to find a place where it can finally get all of that pain of resistance,
All of those reactions quieted down so that it can be in quotes,
In peace again.
How many of the things I ask you,
Do you understand?
Why would I carry over something that for carrying it over as with Stevens by its very presence in this nature,
Unconscious nature produces not just unseen conflict with possibilities that are new,
But literally sees the new possibilities as a threat and a threat to who or what?
A threat to that nature that is so identified with whatever it believes it is and has to be and has to be approved of so that we're never present to the fact that the conflict,
The tension,
The stress,
The fear,
The conflict with the moment isn't because of the nature of the moment,
But rather because of what without knowing it,
We have carried into that moment with us so that quite literally we are never in the present moment.
When you're fully present,
There's no thought,
Not because you are creating a place in space where there's no thought,
But in the true sense of meditation,
Because you have seen that anyone taking thought cannot add one cubit to their stature.
They cannot free themselves.
They cannot make themselves more.
And that's how,
That's how,
If you want to use the word,
The true meditation is inseparable from the awareness that we understand needs to come first so that we are present to the resistance and the pain,
The conflict with the moment,
And then see how the mind,
Instead of getting to the source of that conflict,
Which is our conditioning,
Which is all of these thoughts and feelings with which we're identified.
So that instead of getting to the source of this conditioned nature,
It serves the conditioned nature by allowing that conditioned nature to sort through the experience and try to sort through how to save itself from the experience it gave itself.
You start to see that.
You never walk away from a conversation with someone without thinking about that conversation,
What it means and what you have to do.
You never have an encounter,
Pleasant or unpleasant,
That isn't relived,
Even as you are experiencing it.
Something talking to you about what it means.
Oh,
This is good.
This is bad.
What do you mean?
This is good or this is bad.
What are you talking about?
Not you talking.
It's you,
Meaning this unconscious nature that you're identified with,
Comparing what is going on to what ought to be happening so as to confirm this unconscious nature.
Can you see this with me?
I've run out of time.
I will go into this more deeply.
What does it mean to actually complete the moment,
To be able to complete the moment and the consciousness in it?
We have to understand that there is no separation between the moment and the consciousness revealed by it.
So much to see,
So much goodness to be discovered,
Freedom.
