GF Live 10-8-22 Transform Dark Moments Into Divine Light

We're going to look at something that I sometimes I'm at a loss of words,

Primarily because of how many words I've spoken over these many years trying to convey ideas that need to be turned into actions without the experience of our wishes,

Without the experience of our prayers,

Which is something we're going to talk a little bit about today.

The topic is a simple prayer to transform any dark moment into a divine light.

Is there such a simple prayer?

And I think that by the time we're done,

We'll see that it's not prayer in the usual sense of what you and I think of as prayer,

But something far deeper than that and something that isn't just something we utter.

The old desert fathers,

It's attributed to them anyway,

This line that fish swim,

Birds fly,

Man prays.

Fish swim,

Birds fly,

Man prays.

And the implication and the idea is that just as a fish,

It's natural for a fish to swim and it's natural for a bird to fly.

It is meant to be equally natural and actually effortless in one respect for you and I to live in a state of prayer.

Now I'm fully aware of the fact that the way the world is today,

And perhaps rightfully so,

Given the absolute corruption of almost every body,

Political,

Philosophical,

Religious,

Spiritual,

That we have good reason to be suspicious,

To have doubts.

And I would urge you to have doubts and to be suspicious,

But I would also urge you to use that same arrow of attention that looks out at the world around you and turn it back on yourself so that you might at least instead of just discounting certain ideas,

Take them into a new kind of consideration.

I mean,

Most of us,

If we pray at all the way we are now,

And as we've been taught,

Conditioned really,

Most of us pray to change the conditions that we're in.

Pray to change the world,

Maybe pray to change to help somebody that we love.

Then I would just add that there's no point that I throw the baby out.

With the bathwater here,

I mean,

If you have any understanding at all,

You realize that as is indicated in every spiritual path,

There are multiple words for love,

Multiple meanings of the word love.

And it's true when it comes to prayer.

There are multiple ways in which a man or a woman can pray,

But right now we're talking about what would be a prayer that you and I might have access to that could take some unwanted moment,

Some dark moment,

And turn it around and make it a moment of light,

Make it a moment that liberates us instead of captures us.

So I want to stress this idea that if you look at things in the bigger view,

The evidence is that these prayers to change the conditions around us are largely useless.

In fact,

You could even suspect them as being part of the problem because when we get all identified with something that we feel strongly about and then we pray and then someone doesn't have the same God or pray in the same way,

Then we're at odds with each other.

The world of human experience and the way we experience that world is because of our consciousness and when we pray to change the conditions that our consciousness creates,

We're missing the key element in what it is that's needed to change the world we're in and to change the experience we have of ourselves in this world.

And that's a very important idea.

Christ said,

Physician,

Heal thyself.

I mean,

When you think about all of the things that we pray about,

Most of our prayers have nothing to do whatsoever with any form of remorse or regret on our parts.

And if it is,

Then we surely come upon this sort of strange juxtaposition that while we're praying to change ourselves,

Our attention is on what we don't want to be.

And when our attention is on what we don't want to be or the world we don't want to see,

What is it that we're actually manifesting?

What is it that we're actually a part of in that moment?

Let me cut to the point here.

We're praying all the time without knowing it.

And then when life brings us what we pray for,

We blame others for the pain in those moments.

We blame the world.

But what if we could see as a fact that we are essentially always praying for the experience we have that we don't want.

And then in the midst of that unwanted experience,

Continuing the same kind of prayer that produced it,

Wouldn't that change everything for us if we actually understood that we're not innocent in these moments where suddenly we're afraid or we're angry or we're worried?

But rather we are without knowing it,

Which is the key here.

We're not judging ourselves.

We're complicit in the creation of these very moments that we blame the conflict we feel on.

So if you're going to write something down,

Let's start with this.

I'd urge you to consider it.

Remember,

We're talking about this idea that fish swim,

Birds fly,

And man prays that just as it's the nature of these creatures to do what is natural to them,

It is intended to be natural for us to bring about,

Just as birds and fish bring about their perfection,

Realize the purpose of their existence through their nature,

So are we intended to realize the purpose of our existence,

How we fulfill the possibilities of ourselves.

But not until we understand the following.

Here it is.

Three words.

Attention is prayer.

Attention is prayer,

Meaning that whatever we attend to,

Moment to moment,

Is an unspoken prayer.

Try and see it with me.

When my attention is on something I don't want,

Is my experience anything other than the fact that my attention has fallen onto something,

That by the very fact of it falling there on what you said,

What they didn't do,

What's wrong with the world,

What is my experience in the moment when my attention falls upon something that for falling there makes me feel fear.

We know the experience.

When I think about what's wrong with another person,

My attention is on my resistance to what that person manifests.

And so in a manner of speaking,

Without seeing it,

Our attention connects us directly to whatever the content is in our consciousness that has been drawn to consider what it's considering in that moment.

It's strange to me that we can be so asleep as human beings that we can sit at our house,

In our chair,

At the office,

In the car,

And you have to be the witness of this.

If my attention is on something that I don't want to happen,

Because it seems by not wanting something to happen,

I'm protecting myself,

But for the fact that my attention is on what I don't want to happen,

I'm experiencing resistance to the very thoughts and feelings that my own mind and heart are generating.

And as my attention goes in that direction,

My experience comes that way.

And yes,

Tony,

In a manner of speaking,

An unattended mind breeds defeat,

Because a mind that is unattended is always gravitating toward what it is used to gravitating toward.

So that if I'm used to being afraid of my health,

My finances,

If I'm used to having thoughts about my friends or family that are my enemies or have hurt me,

If I'm used to hating the world because it doesn't understand the way it should be,

If I'm used to that experience of life,

But then I blame life for the experience,

I'm missing the fact that my attention is tying me,

Connecting me to the very thing that I say I don't want.

But because the mind is so divided,

We don't see it.

How many times have you sat and worried about something in your life,

Believing,

As I've been speaking lately,

That worrying is somehow a power of protection when it's quite the opposite?

The more I worry about what I don't want,

Why?

Because my mind tells me if I worry enough,

I'll have control over the situation.

I'll be able to navigate it.

Worry doesn't navigate an unwanted moment.

Worry is the unwanted moment itself.

Our experience is a direct reflection of our consciousness,

And our consciousness unattended consistently connects itself to whatever it feels it needs to protect itself from,

What it doesn't want.

You have to see it for yourself.

Or it says,

I want this,

I need that.

And when it says,

I want this,

Or I need that,

Would it come up with what it wants or needs if it wasn't trying to protect itself from something that it's already attached to,

Depended on?

This is why I want to stress this idea.

Please if you can see it with me.

I go outside on a beautiful day.

Without effort,

My attention is given to the immensity of the woods,

The colors,

The fact that the leaves are changing,

So there's contrast in the canopy,

The stillness or the movement of it.

And without effort,

My attention is given completely to my surroundings.

And in the complete attention to my surroundings,

I experience directly as an aspect of my own consciousness in which those surroundings are being reflected.

The experience of balance and harmony and beauty is inseparable from the fact that my attention is on the manifestation of those things.

Who I am in that moment,

My sense of self cannot be separated from the moment that that sense of self is deriving itself from.

So there's an instantaneous reciprocity,

An exchange.

And you could say in a manner of speaking that that's a form of prayer,

Because in that moment we are asking,

Bringing ourselves into,

Surrendering ourselves to the beauty of that moment,

To the stillness of it,

To the meaning of it,

A meaning that's without word and yet holds more than a thousand words would ever be able to express,

All in the simple act of my attention being given to that moment.

And if that's true,

And it is true,

If you can see it with me,

How much more so is it true when I give my attention to a fear?

The mind says you have to pay attention to this fear.

You have to protect yourself from it,

From what you fear.

You have to.

But if we step back,

Which is part of what we're going to look at as a form of prayer,

If we step back,

That's pretty evident,

Isn't it?

If my attention goes to a fear,

Does it matter why I'm directed to give my attention to that fear?

Or is my experience inseparable from the fear I'm attending to?

Do you see it?

And I know this is tough stuff.

Believe me,

I know.

If I don't protect myself from a fear,

What's going to happen to me?

Because the mind in that moment is comparing itself to all of the horrible possibilities that by the way,

It is painting and projecting as downstream if you don't give your attention to a fear,

So that in all of that resistance to what I am imagining negatively,

Imagine,

Please,

All of my resistance to what I'm imagining negatively hides from me the fact that it's by attending to what I'm imagining negatively that I'm having the most negative experience of all.

Not to mention that I've tried a billion times not to be afraid.

I've fought with people,

I've struggled with everything under the sun,

As most of us have.

And even perhaps acquired possessions or powers or some form of authority,

Only to find out that whatever it is that I've acquired through my attention to somehow insulate me from suffering has maybe insulated me from certain conditions,

But it has not insulated me from a consciousness that always attends to what it doesn't want,

That attends to a constant state of measuring itself according to what it is imagined it must have in order to be whole and safe.

So that by and large what we're looking at here is this idea that we are always praying without ceasing,

But not in the way the desert fathers would have had us pray without ceasing.

Now again there's all these different kinds of prayer,

You know there's Dika,

You go east or west,

Ceaseless prayer,

A man can learn to repeat,

A woman can learn to constantly inwardly speak the Jesus prayer,

I mean there's all,

There's prayer,

Mantrams,

All that,

There's prayer.

But by and large,

Especially since none of it's understood,

Mostly by those who teach it,

It becomes a machine,

It becomes a conditioning,

A way in which to insulate us instead of liberate us from the consciousness.

Because I become identified and mechanical,

Hypnotized.

And I don't understand,

Which is the next important thing,

You might want to at least make a note about this.

And I'm asking you to see if it's true or not.

We pray when we pray outside of the condition we're praying over.

We pray outside of the condition,

We pray over it,

And usually after it's taken place.

Try to see it.

Something happens in the world,

Somebody says something,

I get news about my own health,

Someone I love is suffering.

We pray outside of the condition.

Now what does that mean?

What is the condition?

Again,

To our present consciousness the condition is what we see as the circumstances responsible for the fear,

The pain,

The worry,

Or the doubt that we feel.

But we must learn,

We must see for a fact the condition is not responsible for the experience in our consciousness.

The condition is revealing the tendency in that consciousness to always follow this particular path of hoping that it can change the condition by praying outside of it.

If we want to change a condition,

The consciousness responsible for our experience of it,

We must learn to pray within the condition.

Not pray outside of it.

We must learn to pray within the condition and while it is unfolding.

Now I've just thrown a giant,

As far as I'm concerned,

Feast on the table.

Now let's sit down and see what we can learn from this idea.

Not pray outside of the condition,

Not pray over it,

But rather pray within the condition while it is unfolding.

What does that mean exactly?

If you've followed me,

What is the dark moment we don't want?

If you've been following me,

What is the nature of this dark moment we don't want?

We look at the world,

It's coming undone.

We go to work and someone is cruel.

Our job may be up in the air.

Finances may be going to heck in a hand basket because of the inflation.

Certainly our health deteriorates the more,

By the way,

The more we unconsciously pray to escape what we feel is punishing us,

The more our health deteriorates because the negative experience actually breaks down the immune system.

Worry doesn't help you,

It hurts you.

So what are we talking about,

This dark moment?

How are we going to transform that dark moment until we understand the nature of that dark moment?

Again,

Praying to change the condition,

Useless.

It's so obvious.

My God,

If human beings,

As well intended as they may be,

But well intended doesn't mean not ignorant,

If well intended human beings with their prayers could have changed this world over the millennia that men and women have been praying to change it,

Then by God,

You and I should know this world would not be this corrupt place that it is.

Men and women would not be cruel the way they are.

In fact,

Most of us who pray like that then don't see after we're done being filled with the sense of ourselves as being a godly,

Christ-like,

Buddha-like person.

We go out into the world and it's still everybody for himself.

Because I'm in one particular eye when I'm praying that is satisfying incidentally to the consciousness that derives an identity from that and a false identity,

And then I don't see my identity shifts the moment the conditions do,

Which means it is not I who understands or is in charge of my consciousness,

But conditions take charge of my consciousness and I don't know they do,

And conditions run my consciousness whenever my consciousness gives,

Whenever my attention goes to the condition and then wants to change it.

How will I ever be a human being who can be patient,

Kind?

Able to listen?

How will I ever be at peace with myself if every time an unwanted dark condition comes along?

The first thing I do is give my identity over to my,

What my attention attaches itself to.

And my attention always attaches itself to what it says it has to have to escape,

The condition that is the reflection of itself.

That's what it does.

So the dark moment isn't just the condition we blame for that darkness.

The dark moment can't be separated from the consciousness that meets it with resistance and then imagines the way out of it and in imagining the way out of it perpetuates the prison of it.

Buddha said if a tree falls in the wood and no one's there to hear it does it make a sound?

That koan was introducing or at least trying to awaken the consciousness to realize that there is no relationship apart from what our attention is on in the moment.

There is a mutual dependency so that if my attention goes to the sound of that fear,

Something falls in the wood,

My hope something crashes,

What am I complicit with in that moment if you can see what I'm saying?

So the only way we're going to change the conditions of this world is by changing our consciousness,

Not the consciousness of my brother or my sister.

If I change my consciousness then everyone else around me is going to have to choose for themselves whether or not they want to be part of something that is working to bring about real change or they want to set themselves against it.

So how do I add that necessary light to the moment?

I must do it within the moment itself.

I must add the light,

Not add the prayer for light,

Not add my resentment that others are so full of darkness,

Not add my regret over circumstances that I have no authority to change and not add my prayers that somehow or other all of these things that I see as darkness outside of me could suddenly be filled with the love of God.

No if I want the conditions to change I'm going to have to do the work of adding a little light to the very moment that that darkness has appeared and this consciousness is drawn to it in order to try to deliver itself from something that it just gave itself to.

Add a little light.

And that's not a metaphor because that's about all we know at this point honestly.

Phrases,

Catchy ideas,

Aphorisms because we find comfort in them.

And I'm not talking about a catchy idea,

I'm not talking about an aphorism,

I'm talking about something that when a man or a woman begins to add a little light to the darkness of the moment they understand that the way they're adding light to the darkness of the moment is by bringing themselves into a place within themselves whereby their willingness to see what is taking place in their own consciousness.

That willingness to see is to bring the light into a consciousness that cannot see itself.

Add a little light.

So how do I add a little light?

What would that be like?

What does that even mean to add a little light?

Well if we understand to some extent as I hope that we do that our attention is a form of prayer because our attention connects us to whatever the object,

Thought,

Feeling,

Whatever that state is our attention connects us to it.

And when we are connected to what our attention brings us to and if what our attention has brought us to is some deep regret from our past,

Some anger or resentment over something someone did,

Some fear of the future because we're getting older and our health is deteriorating,

You mean there's just there's no end there is no end to what negative imagination can conjure up in order to keep this consciousness actively involved in trying to escape the very thing it creates for itself.

There's no end to it but there can be an end to our relationship to that consciousness the way it's presently constituted.

I was laying in bed early this morning and there's a favorite Billy Joel song of mine.

In the middle of the night I go walking in my dreams.

I think it's called the River of Dreams.

If you've never heard it it's delightful.

And Billy Joel I believe has a soul,

Has a spiritual wish.

And he says I go walking in the dark and he goes down to this river and he wants to cross over the river to a new life basically.

The kingdom of heaven Nirvana.

But the land that he's in is separated from this higher consciousness by this river of dreams and he wants to cross over.

And I was thinking you know what a good metaphor it is because isn't it true?

I'm sitting here and I'm afraid of what might happen tomorrow.

You know I felt a strange pain.

I've got some so I looked at the news you know what doesn't matter left or right.

Oh my God.

And I want to cross over that moment don't I?

Don't you?

But you see the problem is is that we think that what we have to cross over is the condition that our attention points to as the cause for our pain.

No the crossing over even the I mean even it's even expression all over the place isn't it?

They say yes it's a euphemism he crossed over.

We are created to cross over every moment of our life but not cross over the condition but cross over the level of consciousness that points to that condition as the source of our pain.

That's the crossing over and the crossing over is not a distance to travel.

The crossing over is the recognition that the whole idea that there's something for us to somehow or other get in there and change it outside of us.

The crossing over is the sudden illumination of the consciousness that sees everything as separate from itself.

That's the crossing over because in that moment there's no place for me to go.

There's nothing I have to fix.

Now look again I'm not saying that when there are practical circumstances that require our action that we don't take them but I'm saying to you there is no such thing as a practical action that is the fathered by fear.

So the first thing is always to bring to add a little light into these moments so that by the action by the prayer of bringing ourselves into that moment so that our prayer as I said is within the condition not outside of it.

Our prayer is the activity of our own awareness illuminating what's going on in that moment so we understand where our attention must be kept which is in the unfolding of that consciousness instead of being captured and carried off as it's always being carried off by something that attends to something outside of us tells us the solution is outside of us and all we have to do is get to the point in time when we can finally change that.

And I'm going to say it again it doesn't work it never has and it never will and that's why the world is as corrupt as it is because human beings are believers in passing time believers that somehow or other with enough time we're finally going to get all of this right no I'll tell you what's going to happen with enough time if you and I don't change our consciousness with enough time there won't be a world left in which this consciousness can undergo the purpose of its existence.

What does it mean add a little light?

Do you remember when you were small a kid there was this thing that we were taught in those days you know I don't know I mean like I'm 73 years old so you know this maybe you don't even know what I'm talking about but we were taught to when getting ready to cross the street stop look both ways and listen stop looking listen that's what we were taught and we were taught that because parents knew pretty much that on the way to school or just for that matter that a kid is just this giant mass of constant dreaming a hormone in motion and that the kid doesn't bother to look it doesn't bother to stop it doesn't look it just it just wants to get to what its attention is on get to the playground get to get to the get to the the swings where your would-be sweetie is waiting for you whatever it might be but don't go to school get to the drugstore and sit there instead of going to school and have a cherry phosphate and french fries I mean please if you can just follow me what I'm saying is that we have the capacity as a human being in that moment of what we call darkness to recognize how many times we have been there where our attention goes to our attention our attention goes to our fear our attention goes to what our mind is telling us has happened and what we must do if we don't take direct action in that moment and instead of letting our attention be dragged off into what is the prayer on the part of that consciousness for its perpetuation instead come to a stop not because we want to everything in us wants to move along with the momentum of what our attention is telling us we've got to do we got to go we got to get can't leave this like that god no no no and my attention on that moment seems to be trying again to insulate me from some circumstance but if I can see it clearly and god willing I've explained it in that moment my attention is on the circumstance I don't want but I don't recognize it again because my consciousness is painting pictures of a time to come when I can pray my way out of that pain or pray you into being different no come to a stop and in the truest sense of the word look both ways what does that mean let me look at bring my awareness into the character the quality the nature of the experience itself in that moment not what the experience is telling me will happen not the experience of what my own mind is telling me did happen but the experience of what is happening now which only awareness can do mind measures future mind creates past awareness is the entrance into the character the quality of the moment so let me stop and look not just at the character and quality of the experience of my moment but at the same time what that consciousness is pointing to as the cause of the character and quality and if I can do that I'll actually have a revelation that tells me quite quite clearly you know what this character and quality of this experience is not caused by that condition they don't exist apart from each other without the condition my mind has attending to and telling me is the problem there's no pain so that condition and consciousness are a singularity that we never see is a singularity but if I come to a stop and understand that when I do suddenly I'm going to feel the momentum of all of that this character and quality that usually carries me away with it if I come to a stop and I look both ways I'm going to have a glimpse of something that is what that is the beginning of a true prayer a true prayer because now my awareness and my attention is within the condition meaning within the consciousness responsible for the perception of it and then listen stop look listen I go back to what I started this talk with and I'll end on it all things character creature animate or not all things speak to you from within yourself if we just knew that much we have hints of it in two minutes here I'm going to go outside and feed feed the girls the deer the deer have come and they're standing right at the window two minutes I'm going to go outside the deer are going to speak to me not that they're perfectly silent creatures the morning the temperature of the morning is going to speak to me everything the wildflower the wind the leaf the dead branch everything all of it has voices not the kind of voices from somebody that's got the DTs but voices that because we can participate in that moment in the condition we can begin to hear what this consciousness is telling us not just about the world we're in but about how that world is actually within us and that we have a right as a human being if we can learn to pray ceaselessly meaning learn to keep our attention with ourselves learn to understand that prayer is attention attention is prayer so that I never let my mind go off by itself and attend to what it says it needs to attend to it always has if you will a certain master it always has something observing then if we do that we bring a little light add a little light to that dark moment and don't don't get carried away with this don't go into imagination you're done add a little light well I didn't know I've had the same feeling of anger the same feeling of fear of impatience I've had the same feeling for as long as I can remember and yet the condition I'm blaming it on seems to be a new condition how's that possible conditions reveal consciousness consciousness revealed and accepted as something that is responsible for the perception of the condition is to bring a little light into it and then just stay with whatever little light come to that stop learn to look inwardly outward and listen you do that you'll bring a little light and it's not you really bringing light it's you stepping into the light that this consciousness already has and that's been waiting for you and me to welcome it and to bring that into our prayer make it our prayer and as we do lo and behold we will be perfected by that light that's what it does see you next Saturday if you can go to the go to the profile here I'm going to speak at length tomorrow on attention it's free there's nothing to join I can't promote it directly but I can tell you find out where I'm speaking tomorrow and I hope I see you there be well bye