Drop The Pain Of The Past GF Live 5-11-24

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40:12

Drop The Pain Of The Past GF Live 5-11-24

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Here’s why the negative sense of self is blind: it doesn’t want to see the smallest thing that challenges whatever it’s become identified with; and yet (it is) unable to look at anything else…Which means it is not just a prisoner of what it resists, but (is its) unconscious keeper, as well.

Pain Past Self Discovery Present Moment Self Observation Humility Self Judgment Psychology Anger Resistance Ascension Present Moment Awareness Self Judgment Release Resistance To Change Unconscious Behaviors

Meet your Teacher

Grants Pass, OR, USA

Meet your Teacher

Grants Pass, OR, USA

Transcript

I'm going to present some ideas, A view, If you will, Of our life inwardly and outwardly that we might together, As is best for all of us, Come upon certain discoveries that can at least get us started down the right path, The upper path. And just for a quick tone setter, The upper path is vertical. You wouldn't think that you can climb a mountain by walking around it, Would you? So there is a certain amount of effort, Right effort, And right effort begins with right understanding. Right understanding is the reason that truthful principles have been sown into this world from a righteous place above and within it, And at the same time, To help guide us as we take this path of ascension, Which our spiritual work is meant to be. So I want to start this time together with the key lesson that I've written to set the stage for the talk. Kate's going to bring it up now, So if you would be so kind as to not post. We'll read the key lesson together, And then we'll begin our study. Here's why the negative sense of self is blind. It doesn't want to see the smallest thing that challenges it, Whatever it's become identified with, And yet it is unable to look at anything else, Which means it's not just the prisoner of what it resists, But it is its unconscious keeper as well. Think for a moment what this means. There's something in us that is obviously blind. It's blind because we keep walking into the same situations, The same walls. And yet, The reason that that keeps happening is because we don't understand why that's happening, And why don't we understand the reason we don't learn the lessons we're intended to? That's our study today. Long ago, I gave this talk story about a Native American Indian who came to a certain discovery, Helped to do so by her father, The medicine man, Where she discovered that the most important three words in the language, Anyone's language, Are, I can learn. I can learn. Now, Learning is not adding knowledge. Adding knowledge. Learning is not the memorization of spiritual principles. Learning is not the discipline we enact upon ourselves to try to deliver ourselves from the undisciplined parts of us. Learning is entirely different. Learning is inseparable from what one is given to see in the here and now, In the true present moment. And the reason that that is learning, Or I should say, The reason it's so important and so powerful, Is because, For lack of better words and to be concise, Wisdom is strength, And wisdom is humility. Real wisdom is strength, And it is humility, Whereas the idea of strength by itself, As we should all know to some extent, What we call our strength, Anger, Often acts recklessly, And it certainly is full of arrogance. So, Let's look at the contrast. Wisdom, A form of strength because it's clarity. Clarity brings humility. What we call strength in this world, Reckless and arrogant. So, The question we have before us, And I can only pray that you are up to speed with the reason for the question, Why don't we learn? How many times have you become angry at someone or something and believed that that reaction, In some way or another, Was going to deliver you from the condition that it was blaming, Only to find out, Whether it's 10 minutes, 10 years, 50 years later, I've not learned the lesson. I believe, Still, The lesson is to change or control the condition producing the disturbance, When that has nothing whatsoever to do with the real lesson. And we also know, In counter-distinction to this, Is that lessons, The real lessons, Await us. The old Native American, Again, Saying, We are what we wait for, Meaning that within us already lives the lesson and the realization of that lesson. And it's just a question of bringing about the realization of that lesson into an integrated state. The lesson actually is the integration. And in that moment, We are liberated. What's keeping us from that? When we're designed, Quite literally, Created for the purpose of incorporating lesson after lesson into our life, That is, Each lesson is learned. We are liberated from the part of us that was waiting, In a manner of speaking, For that lesson to come along and reveal to it what it needed to see, So that it could go on, So that it could be transformed. I have a story to help exemplify this. A simple story, Kind of silly, Maybe, But you'll see, And then we'll go into the material together. So imagine, If you will, A couple. They come home from a six-month extended European trip. And when they walk back into their house, And you and I both know for the most part, Almost always kind of glad to be back home, They walk into the living room, And right in front of them, There's like a rut in the carpet that's about 16 inches wide, And that runs from one end of the wall to the other end, Like something had been walking along, Just wore the carpet, A rut. You get the picture. And by the way, Let's bring us into this immediately. How many of us know that there is a certain rut that we can be in with our relationships with people in life? What in the world's going on? What caused that? It's unthinkable. And even as they're sitting there, Right at that very moment, I don't know if you know what a Roomba carpet sweeper is, These little robot vacuum cleaners. Well, Right as they're sitting there looking at this, This Roomba carpet sweeper disengages from its charging platform and methodically begins to do what? It methodically goes right across that path that obviously was made by it. It runs into the corresponding wall on the other side. It turns around and it goes back. And it does that about four times before the man runs over and turns it off. He's like, God, What happened? And then she goes, Oh, Geez, You know what? I forgot to turn on the programming cycle before we left. And it's been running on its own automatic avoidance cycle. Now, Just for fun, How many of you have an automatic avoidance cycle where you run into someone or something always quite familiar, Something that threatens you. And the minute you run into it, We are swept around by a reaction and return back to the place where we started. And then when we get back there, We are sent out again and run into the same thing over and over again. We don't learn the lesson in that, Quote, Programming. So there she is, And she's so upset with herself, As you might be. But in her upset with herself, She gets angry with him. Do you ever get angry with others when you're upset about something? Trying to find anyone or anything to blame for what's happened that you don't want the experience of? She says, Why didn't you remind me, She said, To do that? And she goes on for like 15 minutes. And then they both start unpacking. And while they're unpacking, She brings it up. That night at dinner, It's still going on. She can't drop it. You know what that's like, Don't you? And then finally, He says, Sweetheart, Please, You know I love you. Why do we have to always soften our corrections? He says, You know, I love you. But I mean, With all due respect, Aren't you being exactly like that robot vacuum cleaner right now? I mean, Don't you see it? She said, What are you talking about? He said, Well, What are the, That vacuum cleaner went over the same old place till it wore a rut. You won't let this go. Aren't you just going back and forth over the same old moment in time? Isn't that what we do? Isn't that what our reactions beckon us to do and lead us into? This psychological state of repeat, Repeat, Repeat, Repeat the thing fascinating as it is repeat the very experience that I don't want. What is it about our nature that drives us along in a rut of reactions that are literally the same tracks through life? You fill in the blanks. What are some of the, The, The, The Roomba rut making thoughts and feelings and reactions? Life is against me. I'm bored. I feel incomplete. I've missed out on something critical. It's too late for me. I'm getting old. Oh my God, I'm going to, You, You fill in the blanks. Why is it? Why, Why, Why, Why, Why? So let me stop here a third of the way through and ask you, Can you see the relationship between the story and this part of ourselves that is very much like that Roomba machinery? Yes or no, Please. I asked this so that I can get you to be a little bit active and so that I'm sure that you and I are running along the same vertical track, If you will, Which is that the higher we go, Meaning the more aware and awake we are, The more we can see about this machinery that lives within us that just repeats and repeats and repeats itself. Now we're going to start understanding why, Why it is that that's going on. So a little deep breath, Come back to yourself. We'll start over. Can you see, And I, I'm sure you can, That there's always, Almost always been a kind of a ceaseless unrest, To use that word, In our minds. And that every time that unrest appears, It may be seemingly caused by some different circumstance that has come up to challenge or otherwise disturb what we call our peace. And yet, This has been going on, Not just in your life. How about mom and dad with their drugs and their drinking and their mother and father? And the world caught up in this ceaseless distraction of trying to find something to blame for the disturbance that never has been released. And that just builds and builds and builds until at a certain point in our world, And you can certainly see it today, All we know to do is to see the same thing happening again, Again and again, And then come up with the same reaction that finds someone else or something to blame for this repetitious, Painful experience of our life. So that what I'm saying is that so that what I'm saying is that we have yet to understand the true nature of the disturbance that we live with on a daily basis. I don't know if when you see it, You wake up in the morning disturbed. Make another list, Make a plan, Something always trying to figure out what to do with a certain sense of unrest. So that for the most part, Moving on from this, Our mind, This mind is in a constant process of analyzing the moment that we're in. You can see this, If you will, You have a conversation with somebody, And while you're walking away from the conversation, You're analyzing it. You're talking to yourself about what you just talked about and trying to decide whether you talked about it right or wrong or whether or not you won the point. So this endless analysis of the moment that we're in never leaves us. And that, If you will, The reason it doesn't leave us is because something about that moment that we were actually the ones talking but don't know what we said or if it worked, We're measuring whether or not we succeeded according to some image of ourselves with the task that we put on that conversation. So in a way, We are forever putting every event, Every relationship, The moment of it on a scale of some kind and measuring that moment against whatever our particular conditioning is. And depending on our conditioning and how we measure that moment, We either come out on top or we come out having failed because our conditioning always looks at everything as right and wrong, Yes and no, Good and bad, Positive or negative. And then whether or not that moment measures up according to our own measurement, We react according to that conclusion so that without realizing it, The mind, Our mind as it is, The present level of it, Is in a constant state of not just judging each moment but sitting in judgment of its own thoughts and feelings, Even its own memories. Please try to see this with me. You start thinking about someone who hurt you. You start worrying about a moment to come. And you can't see that what you are looking at in that moment essentially is a dream, It's a memory. You can't think about someone in the past without going into the content of that memory. So this mind brings up a memory or it brings up the image of a time to come, Which is also a memory, And then it begins to judge its own memory. I have a memory, It comes up, I didn't bring it up, Perhaps I did ask for it. There is a summary reaction because every memory contains the content of the reactions that produced it. And here I am and suddenly I'm having this reaction to my own memory and then I'm judging the memory for the reaction that I have to it. I'm reliving the unwanted moment, Having the reaction to and the resistance to it, And judging the moment as if it's present and real. And we don't see any of it going on. This is what it means to be spiritually asleep. So the question is, If you're following me, I trust you are, Who is this judge? What is this temporary sense of I, This sense of myself that appears in that moment that not only brings up the moment that will be judged and reacted to, But that then turns to the very reaction and its own judgment to help it resolve that moment. So if you're following me, Here's an unconscious nature. It brings up something, It's triggered quite literally by anything that grabs its attention. As its attention is seized, And that's a proper word for it right now, One day you'll see it. No human being that is even remotely awake gives their attention willingly over to the revisitation of something that makes them feel the revisitation of something that makes them feel like a victim. But in our sleep, There is this incessant disturbance, Incessantly seeking something to reconcile what it looks for as the reason for the pain it's in. And as it goes through that, It determines by its subsequent reaction why we're having that experience. And then once that same unconscious mind determines why, Then that reaction sets the stage for all of the choices that we're going to make and the actions that follow. Now, If that's true, And it is, And you have to see it for yourself in real time, Not because I'm explaining it, Can we see why it is that we don't learn? How can I learn if all I do is run back and forth over the same period of time that reaction brings up? So I'm no different than a Roomba vacuum cleaner, Because the only thing this machinery of this unconscious nature can do is have the switch flipped, The timing mechanism goes off. He said that, The next thing I know, And I never learn. So now I want to ask the question, What we're leading to? What is the nature of this temporary, Can you see? It is a temporary sense of I that is seemingly awakened by a moment, An event, A sudden sense of disturbance. And in the moment of that disturbance, Always respond from the same level of mind that was disturbed. So transition, Nice deep breath, See the following with me. You and I, We have a set of physical eyes. And this physical eyes, In fact, All of our senses are an immediate, Timeless relationship with the here and now. There is no time between the observer and the observed, None. They are a singularity. This touches a little bit on quantum physics, But I can't go into it now. So that when I look out and see as I do this absolutely gorgeous spring morning, The light that is coming into my eyes and the experience of it is inseparable from the light that is coming into it and the mechanism, These remarkable senses that we've been given, That without which there is no present moment. Without the eyes to see, The ears to hear, The nose to smell, There is nothing to see, Nothing to hear, And nothing to taste. They are a singularity. So we have a set of eyes that are inseparable from the present moment. I hope you're following me. But to the point of what we're talking about right now, And far more telling in terms of why we keep repeating the same mistakes, Repeating the same mistakes, Not learning from these moments, The lessons bring. The lessons these moments bring is that our psychological eyes, Not our physical eyes, Our psychological eyes, That's an E-Y-E and an I in quotes as well, Our psychological eyes see and experience the past. So that our mind is endlessly triggered by its own unconscious reaction to wanting or not wanting whatever its own conditioning tells us is good or not good for it. What does that mean? My psychological eyes see and experience the past. You're driving down the street. The odds are greatly that you are not, Other than thank God, The moving center and instinctual center knows how to drive a car. Because my mind is somewhere in Spain. It's on some, A sprained ankle that I don't know what I'm going to do. My mind is always in the past. And meaning that when I look out and I see someone walking down the street and I immediately judge them, Why do I judge them? Why do I judge them? Because I am looking at them through the eyes of my conditioning, Through my past. I have to go talk to somebody. I have a business meeting. Why am I worried? Why am I nervous? Why am I anxious about anything I have to do? Why do I take thought for everything? Because something in me is measuring what the meaning of that moment might be according to what I hope to take from it or how I feel about it. According to what I hope to take from it or hope to avoid in it. So there is no point in which, For the most part, A sleeping man or woman is actually present to the impressions that are inseparable from the senses taking them in, Living in that unity in the relationship between the light of heaven and the earth that animates it. Instead, We're somewhere in our own past listening to something measure the moment and then telling us go here, Don't go there. Yes, Angela, Awareness. So are you following me? I don't experience the present moment. I experience what my conditioning tells me the meaning of the present moment is, Which is not the present moment, But it does become the prison that I'm in, In that moment. So that my own mind is complicit in constantly creating an unconscious condition in which, Without having any awareness of it at all, I'm participating in the resistance that ensures I'll never learn the lesson in the moment, Which for the most part is what? What are we talking about here? What is the real lesson in these moments? Essentially, It's this without some form, One kind or another of comparing a moment to something that I came into that moment looking for already desiring. You know, It's a phenomena that we don't know. We're unaware of this labyrinth in this unconscious nature that comes forward into the present moment or more accurately, Truly accurately, That the present moment, The light of the present moment pours into this tomb of thought, Into this pool of past thoughts and feelings, To bring about in that nature a new relationship in which everything that is asleep there, All that is the residue of the past, That it might be acted on and resurrected in a new form, So that instead of me reliving the moment, Because I am unconsciously identified with what my mind is reacting to based on its preferences, Instead of being in that prison, I'm aware of the prison machinery of a nature that has its place in this world in terms of a practical life, But that was never intended to provide for us as it does, Not just a repeated sense of self, But the reactions inherent in that little machine called this nature that can only do one thing, Given whatever the stimulus may be. God, It's breathtaking, And I pray that you see it with and I pray that you see it with greater and greater clarity, Not fearing the fact that someone says something to you, You've got one road, You look at the news, One road, One path, One rut, I like this, I don't like this, I want this, I hate that, Why are they like that? They should be more like this, These binary states of an unconscious nature are completely machines, And they are completely conditioned by not just our individual past with all of its problems that have yet to be resolved, Because they're not understood the real nature of them, But that is a collective, The human mind is a collective organism that is in a ceaseless state of sleep that ensures, Because of its own divided condition, That it will continue to do the same thing over and over again, Only come up with new reasons why it had to be done that way, And then create new laws, New programming for that robot. You know that an awakened human being doesn't need a moral code, Love requires no laws to be enacted, Intelligence doesn't require knowledge, Wisdom, Intelligence, Love, These higher qualities of the human soul that we are intended to become the instruments of, Once actualized by the light that stirs them into awareness, They don't need to go through what we go through every day, Which is waking up and wishing the day weren't going to be the day I don't want. How does a day that I don't want exist? I'm asking you to examine it. How can I wake up and not want the day? I'm telling you how, Because my mind is telling me what the day is going to be, And the mind that's telling me what the day is going to be, It's going to be this, It's going to be that, You have to do this, Why me? The mind that sits there and whines and complains about the day it doesn't want has first imagined the day it doesn't want and then resists its own reactions to its imagery. You see any of this and you will change. You won't change because you want to change, You'll change because you see that there is no alternative if you want to make this vertical ascension, If you want to participate in the purpose of your existence on this planet. So getting to a summary and a key lesson. Without some form of what? I wake up, I don't want the day. I wake up, My body hurts. I wake up, I don't look so good. I wake up and you don't look so good. You're in pain, I don't want anything to do with you. How can I have this resistance to any moment or any relationship? Painful resistance, Psychological resistance, How can I have that kind of pain without comparison? It's impossible. It's impossible. So sitting underneath all of this business is a mind asleep to itself, Divided in itself, That never stops comparing how things should be to the way they are, Or more better said perhaps, It never stops comparing what is to what it wants or doesn't want. That's all it does. In an incessant state of judging life, Believing that the life it judges is real life. The life the mind judges is not real life, It is unlife, It is death. It is dead, It is past, It is gone. But this nature that doesn't know anything about itself wants to continue as do all creations. And so it reinvents itself, It gives itself another set of shocks by comparing dramatically what you are to how you should be, To the way this is, To how it should have been. So that without this comparison of the painful kind, I hope you can see this, Without this comparison of the painful kind, Where is the problem with the present moment? See, You and I, We have to get to a place where we start realizing, You know what, If I'm going to walk the talk, I say I want a relationship with the divine. I say I want to be in the present moment. I really want to know what it's like to be compassionate and kind and patient. If I really want the things that are sown into the soul for it to seek in the divine that put the seed there, Then I'm going to have to start recognizing, You know what, There's nothing about this moment that has anything in it that is remotely loving or divine or kind. As long as I am the first one to agree with whatever this reaction is that tells me something's wrong here, And then that mind and agree with it says, Here's what's wrong, Guy. You have to do what no one else has to do. You have to do what no one else has to do. Why are they getting, How come this, How come I don't? And the dragging up out of this unconscious nature, A ceaseless comparison of what is always good, Because it's always part of the development and the revelation of wisdom, Comparing this present moment to who I am and what I expect from it, And then regretting or resenting what I don't get according to my own imagination. So if you're following me, How do I begin to learn the lesson in the moment? Not imagine what the lesson is. How do I begin to participate in the actual revelation that every moment is? There can't be a revelation without something, Without it being revealed to something. There can't be a revelation of this beautiful spring day without it being revealed, Reflected in the consciousness that shares in that moment. And if that's true, Which it is, That means that anything that is interfering with that revelation is doing so at the cost of the possibility of me participating in the discovery of my actual life, Of my real life, Which is not one that is predicated and determined by the reactions I have to the moment, But rather contains those reactions and uses those reactions as the revelation of the nature that is having them. You want to know how to study yourself? You are in the place and time endlessly where everything you need to see is being unfolded right within you. We can't have a negative reaction without some form of resistance. There can't be resistance without comparison, And there can't be comparison without imagination psychologically. So that if there's something in this consciousness, This unconscious nature that never stops imagining and then measuring the moment, Measuring the moment, Then what we have to do is to start seeing all of this mechanism. And if you want to use the words, Unplug the machine, Meaning begin to realize that if I'm going to have a real life, I have to participate in a completely different way with the moment that I do now. So that instead of looking at these negative reactions, And again, I ask you to see it, Have negative reactions for us. They are our confidant and guide. In real time, See it. I'm so worried. I just heard something. That reaction is not only telling me why I have to worry, But at the same time, It must be pointing to what there is to worry about. And at the same time, Telling me the consequence if what I'm worried about doesn't pan out the way my conditioned mind says it has to do it. So these negative reactions were never meant to be our confidant and guide. Actually, For us, They are our God. You may not like the words. No one does when I use that expression. But what is fear other than my God? If it, I let it tell me what to do to free myself from a God-given moment intended to reveal to me where it is that I have and worship this false God called myself, Called my reactions. Old machinery running the same old patterns, Creating an unseen prison that's only as real as we identify with these reactions. That's what we have to become a student of, Not the stooge, But the student of the one who chooses in the moment of that reaction of that resistance to become the observer of it instead of the one who serves it. Kate, Let's bring up the last key lesson as a summary and a kind of exercise. Here's the second key lesson. Read along with me, Please. Negative reactions can never liberate us from any unwanted moment because they are the reincarnation of the unconscious nature responsible for their painful reappearance. Let's sink in. Negative reactions can never liberate me or you from any unwanted moment because that negative reaction, If you followed me at all, Is the reincarnation of the unconscious nature sitting there and measuring and weighing that moment, Comparing it to the content of what it expects or doesn't want. So it is actually responsible for the reappearance of the condition that I don't want. You see that? You let that circle be made whole within you through the light of awareness that reveals it for what it is. And the next time that negative reaction comes up in you, You'll be a little less willing to let it start running in place, Bringing you into and through the rut of that ceaseless negative thinking. And you will essentially, According to the degree to which you see what I've said is true, You will in that moment be able to unplug that machinery. Or more accurately, You'll be able to use that machinery for the purpose it was given to you instead of you serving its purpose, Which is uselessness. That's about it. Join me tomorrow. Fascinating material for tomorrow's talk. I speak on Wednesdays, Saturdays here on Zeit Timer and Sundays. Find me online. You go to my profile. I talk for free. Nothing to join. Everyone's welcome. And all of us can continue to make this vertical ascent by beginning to end our relationship with these horizontal time-captive reactions.