Imagine a new bartender at a local pub of some kind,
First day on the job.
And when he gets there to open up,
I don't know what time bars open,
God help us,
Maybe 10 in the morning,
He gets there to open up.
There's a man waiting outside with his head kind of hung low and bartender opens the door,
Good evening sir,
And the man walks in and sits at a stool.
What'll it be?
He says,
Give me a couple shots of Vio,
Give me a couple shots of something.
I don't even know what you get a couple shots of,
Vodka,
Gin.
And he throws down a couple shots and bartender's cleaning up,
Getting ready and the man says,
Hit me again.
I saw that in a movie.
Bartender pours another shot and a couple shots later,
The bartender says,
So what's going on?
I can feel the pain.
And then the man says,
Well,
He says,
I got laid off and if that wasn't bad enough,
When I got laid off,
My wife left me.
And if that wasn't bad enough,
When my wife left me and I got laid off,
I pretty much lost everything.
Now,
A bartender is supposed to lend a willing ear,
But this bartender,
Let's just for grins and say,
He's a man who is working on himself and he understands and wants to help,
But he also knows that he mustn't be complicit in enabling self-destructive behavior.
And he says to him,
Well,
That's pretty,
Pretty tough.
He said,
Pretty recent,
Huh?
And man looks up and he says,
No,
Not really.
Well,
When did this happen?
The bartender says,
And the man looks at him kind of sheepishly and he says,
I kind of lost track of time,
But as best I can tell it was about 20 years ago.
20 years ago.
Now we may hear a story like that and God forbid,
Or I should say,
God willing that it is not our own story,
But I want to help you understand something that we don't see is true about ourselves because we can look at that man and say,
Well,
How pitiful he hasn't moved on.
But to draw the parallel and I want to do so,
How many of us are still drinking in the same thoughts and feelings,
The same reaction,
Shot after shot of something painful from the past,
Some mixed drink of misery because somebody said something to us at the office yesterday or we look at the future and we're still drinking in the fear that that may prove to be something problematical to us.
I guess here's what I'm trying to ask you.
What would you think of someone who in one way or another continues to hope and believe that he or she can change the content of the moment they're in,
Which is defined by their reaction?
How many of you think they can change that by reliving the same reaction?
Because isn't that what the man in our story is doing?
He's reliving the same event.
And the first key is here,
He's not reliving the same event.
In his mind,
Because he continues to fuel the experience born of that reaction,
He thinks it's the same event.
It's not the event.
He is reliving time.
He is reliving the nature of time.
He is reliving the reactions.
And every time he relives the reaction that was first garnered back in the day where it may have been natural and necessary,
He is reliving the same identity,
The same sense of self that he believes if he just commiserates long enough with the content of what it is that he blames for the pain that he's in,
That one day he'll get past that kind of suffering and pain,
Not realizing the pain he's suffering from has nothing to do with what took place back in the day.
What he's suffering from is reliving the same unwanted memory and then reliving the reaction that gives rise to it,
Hoping the reaction will change the experience at some point in time.
And if this isn't clear,
That's all we know to do.
We look to our own thoughts and feelings and believe that the captivity that's inherent in their conditioning can be transcended by giving ourselves over time and time again,
Because time and time again,
Part of that conditioning of that mind is to generate some new plan,
Come up with some new way in which we can look at what happened and then formulate a way to be free.
And I'll ask you,
Do you think that works?
And we'll say,
No,
That doesn't work.
And then we look at the people around us and we see how they're stuck.
And the only thing we know to do in this stuckness is to blame the condition that we feel we are stuck in.
And the point of this talk is to somehow or other illuminate and illustrate the fact that we are never stuck in time.
That's impossible.
What we're stuck in is a consciousness that requires some time for it to look at,
Reflect upon and then find itself in that condition over and over again and derive a sense of self that never transcends itself because it can't.
That's all our conditioning knows to do.
When I was thinking about what I wanted to share with you this morning,
I couldn't help but think of a number of times where I've had these interviews and sometimes they get heated because the host can't stand the idea that I say that there is a first work.
There is something that is first and that everything must follow what is first.
Otherwise,
What is out of order will create more chaos.
And what is out of order and what continues to create chaos is that we live from a nature without knowing we live from it.
That believes our responsibility as a human being first and foremost is to change the conditions that we look out at and blame for the conflict we feel.
And this is in scale.
You must understand it.
Many of us live in conditions where we blame the conflict we're in on the people we work with or our mother,
Our father,
Our friends,
Our family,
Our husbands,
Our wives.
We blame the condition of that conflict on the person who drives like a maniac.
We look at the news and we blame the conflict we're in on the conditions the news presents to us as being responsible for the continuation of this hellish life that humanity has fallen into.
And because of that conditioning,
The only thing we know to struggle with are the conditions that that conditioning points to as the source of our suffering.
And that conditioning tells us,
Because it's part of what has been handed down through time,
That we're not a responsible human being unless we're out there trying to change the world and change everything that's transpiring.
And so we get caught up in all of this,
This business where some of it,
There's no question about it.
The planet wouldn't be in the shape that it's in if it weren't for the appetite of a consciousness that believes it can eat its way out of its pain.
And I'm not just talking about throwing down food or drugs and drink.
People talk about how to change the climate.
You can't change the climate until the appetite of this nature changes that's produced that climate.
But we never want to struggle properly with ourselves.
We always want to struggle with something that because we can't change it and we can't,
Produces an almost unending stream of frustration and finger pointing and blame and guilt.
Instead of realizing that the root of the problem is that we're living from the wrong model altogether.
This is where true individuality must eventually surface.
And it's there.
It bubbles up inside of us every day.
This living light that understands there's a completely different model by which we're meant to live.
And it's not a model of repetition.
It's not a model of reincarnating what never worked the first time.
It's a model of being present enough to see that the old model has failed.
And the thing that's so extraordinary is you can't find in any true teaching,
You find any truly awake individual present or past.
And they will tell you the first model,
The first works that must be attended to is we must attend to this consciousness that continues to create the world in its own image and then hate what it has created and blame the world instead of the maker of that image,
Which is this constant identification with these reactions,
With these thoughts and feelings.
And it all flies in the face of the fact that there is something inside of us that is endlessly dissatisfied.
And it's endlessly dissatisfied because the model that it lives from tells it that satisfaction will be found in time when that which torments me or you or whatever it may be at whatever level,
When that's all been resolved,
So will my life be reconciled and I'll be good with God and everything will be right in my life.
And one day,
Sooner than later,
God willing,
A man or a woman realizes that time isn't coming and it never will come in this world because this world is the product of time,
The product of a consciousness that creates time in order to escape its own creations.
When we look around,
I don't know who else to be.
I'm afraid to go against the grain.
My mind tells me all manner of things will happen if I don't at least ensure to some extent that I maintain the appearance of myself so that people can continue to confirm me as I imagine myself because God forbid that the people around me,
Who by the way,
Are as self-centered and selfish as I am and are only concerned with winning my approval for their appearance,
I'm afraid that I will actually lose the approval of people that I actually don't even care about.
I just want them to want me.
I just want to be wanted and I want to be wanted because I don't know how else to feel whole.
And that's why the model has failed us because the unity,
The wholeness,
The integrity,
The qualities that our soul cries out for to be a reflection of the divine source of those qualities,
It can't find that in this world the way it looks at the world through these thoughts and feelings.
This model that we call the circle of life,
You know,
That's a beautiful thing,
Isn't it?
The circle of life.
I remember seeing the Lion King,
I think that was what it was called.
And Elton John sang the circle of life,
What a great song it was.
And we all say,
Yeah,
The circle of life.
I love the circle of life.
It's beautiful.
It's beautiful until I come back to the same place again and again and again.
Nature is a circle,
A perfect circle.
And if human beings hadn't screwed it up,
It wouldn't be in the condition it is.
And all that we see nature doing is working out a certain karmic balance to ensure that the greater whole of nature continues as is needed by this planet.
And it could give a hoot what happens to the human beings who are messing it up.
There is this circle of life.
But we're not meant to be in the circle of self.
Our body goes through the circle of time,
It must.
The circle of self is another story because in the circle of self,
In the circle of these conditioned thoughts and feelings that not only have determined for us before we even knew it who and what we have to be to be content,
Then sets up the image and the expectation of that contentment against everything that denies it.
And then we're caught in the circle of conflict,
In the circle of discontentment,
In the circle of forever trying to change the circle by running around it one more time and hoping to find another beginning.
And that's as opposed to we can see in nature,
We realize nothing's stuck in nature.
Nature continues to perfect herself.
But I've used the first 20 minutes of this talk,
I hope I haven't gone too long with setting this idea.
We're not stuck in time.
We're not stuck in a world that's stuck in the mire of its own creations.
What we are stuck in,
All of us,
To whatever extent it's true,
Is in a fallen consciousness,
In an unconscious nature that is blind to what it does to itself.
And in its blindness,
And part of its blindness,
Is that it believes in its own endless explanations and justifications.
It actually accepts as true the promises it gives itself to escape the pain that it's created for itself.
And it never understands that it runs through that blame,
Shame,
Or design a new game mentality,
Believing that somewhere along the cycle it's going to escape the conflict that consciousness creates.
This is our work to understand it.
And yeah,
It is a bad model,
But it's the only one we know.
But it's not the only one we're meant to be a part of.
I'm trying to decide whether to take this little tangent here,
But I think I better continue working on what I want to talk to you about.
What is the.
.
.
I'm bringing you in.
Let me know if you're still out there.
Give me a hello or a yes.
The line stops moving and I want to make sure that we're still connecting.
So now I ask you,
What is the nature of any anxious,
Fearful thought or feeling a reaction?
What is the nature of that moment that we don't want?
I've been pointing to it.
Our mind tells us that the nature of the moment we don't want is the condition we're reacting to.
I'm going to say it again.
Our mind tells us the condition that we don't want is the situation,
The relationship we're reacting to.
That mind tells us then,
Due to this resistance we have,
That we are separate from what we're resisting and therefore we just need to figure out in time how to change that condition.
But here's the fact.
We are not reacting to trying to avoid the condition our reactions are pointing to.
What we are trying to escape in that moment is the experience of our own reaction.
That is what we are struggling with in every given moment that is not wanted by us,
That is resisted by us.
The divided mind says the problem is the person,
The position,
The place.
But the divided mind can't understand the position,
The person,
The place doesn't exist without the consciousness that creates it.
And so this mind is locked in a struggle with itself.
All the time looking at what it says is the conclusion of the problem.
When it arrives at the contentment it will reach and then it tries to escape or transcend the condition.
That consciousness cannot transcend the condition it creates.
It can only reincarnate it.
And it's a form of insanity.
What do you think all this triggering is about?
Have you noticed how less and less it takes to cause this calamity?
People going off the hook?
They used to call it going postal because the people in the post office,
The people that work there were so frustrated with the system that it didn't work.
The more they tried to change the system,
The more abhorrent it became.
So here's the point.
This is a form of insanity.
Trying to change the condition I blame for the conflict I feel in it is a form of insanity.
And it drives us more insane because the more we try to change the condition,
The more prevalent it becomes in our consciousness.
The more prevalent it becomes,
The more we don't want it,
The more we don't want it,
The more we fight with it.
And you get the idea of this circle of self.
And everything that we continue to struggle with validates what?
It validates the perception that we have that the problem is outside of us.
And so we not only are unconscious to this nature that generates this resistance and the reactions,
But then we do what?
We follow these reactions.
We believe the reaction to the condition is going to change the condition.
When if you understood me,
The real condition is my reaction and the experience of it I don't want.
It's the blind leading the blind and both following in a pit.
I remember some years ago,
Many years ago,
Actually,
Although I've retold the story in a book,
I think.
There was this one scene in an old,
Old TV series.
It was called Spanky and Our Gang.
It would be considered absolutely politically incorrect now,
Even though the relationships that were revealed through this,
These children,
This gang of kids,
Every last one was precious.
And contained certain insights.
I bet you they would even ban the old Twilight Zones because the stories were too pointed and always pointed by the way,
Back to the fact that the fault was not in the world,
But that the world was the fault of a consciousness that makes itself in its own image.
Anyway,
In this story,
Spanky and Our Gang,
The kids want to sneak into school and steal a forthcoming test that the teacher announced that day that nobody was ready for.
The kids were out having fun.
They weren't studying.
So they decided that the solution was to steal the answers to the test out of the teacher's desk.
And so that night,
I don't know,
Five or six of them,
Alfalfa,
Spanky,
Darla,
Farina,
I can't remember,
They had a bulldog with a spot,
It was called Spot.
Anyway,
They snuck into the school through a window,
Opened a door,
Got in and pulled the test out of the drawer.
Now they still have them,
I think,
In schools.
Back in the day when I was in school,
They did in the science office.
And back at a long time ago,
All the classes were one class.
The teacher was able to teach everything.
Everything wasn't so specialized.
There was a skeleton and the skeleton would be on a rack and the teacher could use the skeleton to present lessons in physiology,
Biology.
And the rack was a rolling rack.
Now unbeknownst as they broke in,
One of the kids,
It was Farina,
Somehow inadvertently got some kind of rope that they used to climb in to the window,
Wrapped around his ankle and had not removed it when they got in.
And the rope had,
Without anybody seeing it,
Had roped around the base of that skeleton.
That's such a perfect example of second force.
And so when they got ready to go and Farina started to leave,
Well,
What do you think happened?
The skeleton started to come behind him and the other kids.
And as they saw the skeleton start to come behind them,
They all started to run because who wants a skeleton following them?
Who wants their past following them?
The bones,
The debris of days gone by that only seem to have the life they do because we are still attached to them.
And so here comes the skeleton following the kids and they all scream and they all go running.
Now as they run,
They scatter,
As you would imagine they would.
Farina tries to scatter too,
But for reasons unknown to him,
The skeleton is tied to him and it's following him everywhere he goes.
And no matter what he does,
He can't escape what's following him.
Can you draw the parallel with me?
Yes or no?
No matter what I do to escape the onset of these same reactions,
These same thoughts and feelings,
Reliving these encounters with people who hurt me,
Building accounts,
All of that business,
What happened to me 10 minutes ago or 20,
000 years ago,
That consciousness remains complicit in the continuation of its own content.
And it isn't just our content that is continued.
So is the conflict born of believing somehow or other that people I don't understand require that I fear them and then seeing through time,
Everyone reacting and responding the same way.
I live from these memories without knowing it.
And I'm haunted by things that seem to follow me,
Conditions I can't escape.
The reason you can't escape the condition is because this consciousness,
Our identity is tied to it.
So can we see the parallel that what we're running from that seems to be following us is only following us because somehow or other we're complicit in its continuation.
And until we have that understanding,
What can happen?
Now in the story,
At some point,
I don't know whether Farina tripped or just finally couldn't run anymore.
When he stopped running,
What do you think happened?
The skeleton rolled right by him,
Just kept going.
And then he realized he was tied to it.
We have to realize that there is something in us that is tied to resisting anything that seems to challenge the content of our expectations and demands so that we relive it and relive it and relive it.
And we don't even suspect it's true.
And until we have that understanding that this consciousness that we are through identifying with these reactions complicit in the continuation of these unwanted experiences,
What else can happen other than here's the event,
Here's the reaction,
Here's the resistance,
Run,
Get rid of it,
Change,
Control,
Fight it,
Do anything other than understand that the reason for the experience is not the condition,
But the condition is revealing through our resistance to it,
The conditioned consciousness.
The condition is revealing to us through our resistance to it,
The content of our own conditioned nature.
You know,
There's a lot of great old stories.
I don't know if you've ever heard them.
I can recant several of them.
I don't have time to do it,
But I'll at least give you one.
There's two of them.
One is about a woman living alone and she has this cabin,
It's snowy outside.
She goes to get wood or something like that.
And as she's picking up the wood for her fire,
She notices that they're laying on the ground like a frozen rope is a snake.
And she,
I don't remember exactly whether the snake,
You know,
Says,
Please help me,
You know,
Take me inside,
Whatever it is.
She takes the snake,
It's frozen,
It's solid almost.
And she takes it inside and she puts it by the fireplace.
Now just hold that thought for a moment.
The same story,
Exact same story about the turtle and the scorpion.
There's this turtle getting ready to swim from one side of the river to another.
And a scorpion walks up and it says,
Hello,
My name is Sam and I want to go on the other side,
But as you know,
I can't swim.
So I'm wondering if you wouldn't carry me over on your back so I could join you getting to the other side,
To the resolution of this disparity between where I am and where I want to be.
That's the interior meaning of it.
Now back to the snake story.
So the woman,
The story goes,
Nurses the snake back to health.
And when she nurses the snake back to health,
What do you think the snake does?
Gives her a whack,
It bites her.
And she looks at the snake,
Well,
Why would you do that over to the turtle and the scorpion?
Very convincing as was the snake calling on a certain part of the turtle,
As did the snake,
The woman.
And the turtle gets on the water,
Carrying the scorpion over.
And as the turtle sinking into the depths along with the scorpion,
Why did you do that?
We're both going to die.
The snake tells the woman,
The scorpion tells the turtle the exact same answer.
Some of you know it already.
That's my nature.
It's my nature.
I am and I do what my nature is.
It's the nature of the creature.
We don't believe that it's the nature of our present consciousness to continue to bring us into the conditions that it brings up in memory so that it can resist its own experience and in the resistance of its own experience,
Come up with the next thing it needs to do to save itself from the condition it blames when the condition doesn't exist apart from the nature that recreates it.
Can you see this with me?
Are we connecting across this internet?
Yes?
Now,
We can suspect this is true.
And I hope that most of us suspect it is true.
But suspicion of truth is not the same as the validation of it.
It's not the same as verifying it.
This is where most of us fall off the spiritual path because we take our capacity to identify with the good feeling of understanding.
Yes,
This duality is the issue.
This appetite is responsible.
And I'm a bad person.
I'm going to get better.
And we fall into the exact same trap of believing that somehow or other time is required in order to produce the conversion in this consciousness and its transformation.
And nothing can be further from the truth.
Any time,
The idea of time,
Tomorrow,
A moment later,
Something that will change when things finally get the way they're supposed to be,
Every last one of those thoughts is the nature of that which is stinging us and killing us,
Our possibilities in that moment.
If we understand the nature of these reactions and our attraction to them,
Then in understanding that,
We must do the one thing that that nature will never tell us is necessary or good for us to do.
And what is what?
We have to leave that snake.
We have to leave that thought.
By the way,
Do you know why snakes have the bad rep they do?
They have a forked tongue.
That was always considered divided.
Native Americans used to speak of white Americans as having a forked tongue.
Why?
Divided.
They were thieves,
Liars.
So as anyone who listens to a thought or a feeling that they pick up,
And they pick it up because that thought or feeling tells them,
You need to pick me up in order to be safe.
When exactly the opposite is true,
What we need to do is leave that thought,
Leave that memory,
Leave that reaction right where we find it.
That's what we must do is leave it where we find it.
You will spend your life as I have mine and will continue to do.
Working to understand that our first responsibility,
Our first works is to allow the greater works of the divine to continue to produce through our experience of this consciousness.
Why do you think we're in this body,
Man?
We're not here to change the world into what will look more like us.
It already does,
And it's a nightmare.
We as human beings belong to a level of consciousness.
We come into that consciousness and that consciousness is conditioned.
That consciousness has fallen into a place where it believes because it wants its own identity,
I want my own sense of self apart from everything else,
Which by the way is the pain because it is apart from everything else forever producing the illusion it's going to escape itself.
That must be married,
The will of heaven and the will of earth,
The two worlds united.
It is the basis of every true teaching that there is this circulation,
Not a circle of life,
But a cycle of light that continues to reveal to us the consciousness that we don't know anything about and how we begin to leave that thought,
Leave that feeling,
Leave that reaction.
I'm driving in my car,
A song comes on the radio,
I'm dragged back into the past.
I'm listening to the speaker and as he's saying something,
It brings up a sudden memory and my attention leaves the place it should be where I might perceive something new and I'm suddenly caught in the pain of what happened or how much I don't want to hear certain things or how I long to be free.
Get rid of your longing to be free and do the work in the moment to recognize that longing to be free is the same as believing you're not and that we are always free in any moment where we realize the captivity is not the condition but our identification with a consciousness that wants to live at the expense of our rebirth.
How do I leave it where I find it?
I've outlined for 39 minutes,
I have to be present to when this nature engages me and it engages me not just in thought,
Sometimes the body will have a reaction before the mind even describes what's happened.
Of course it does.
Body has its own memory,
It's conditioned.
The emotional center,
It's conditioned.
The lower parts of us completely conditioned,
Mechanical and they will respond and pick up in that moment and then we'll pick up where they pick up and the next thing you know we're caught up in that circle that goes nowhere.
We turn the table on this nature,
I'm using that word not as something apart from it but being able to use it.
Where instead of letting it draw us into what it says we need to be aware of,
We draw it into the awareness we have of it.
We draw that moment into our awareness as best we can so that in the light of our relationship to this we realize that's not I,
What happened 10 years ago,
What may happen tomorrow that gives me this incredibly defined identity,
That's not I.
But I pick up that I and when I pick it up I get bit and when I get bit I'm poisoned.
I'm poisoned by the nature then through association continues itself and drives the conflict deeper only for me to relive it in a more extreme way next time.
Bring it into that awareness.
If you want,
Practice going silent,
Practice being still.
Anything you can do to bring that thought,
That feeling,
That reaction into your awareness of it will bring it into the light of a new relationship that is developed in that moment,
A new model.
And in that new model you will glean something new about the condition and everything we learn about the condition that is true frees us from the condition that we didn't know we were in the moment before.
