Take a nice deep breath.
We're going to look at something deep and fascinating,
And more importantly,
Something that if understood and practiced,
Can produce a sea change in our lives,
Both in the sense of changing the life,
The world that we see,
And changing the seer,
The nature of ourselves,
Which is what all spiritual work is about.
There's an old proverb,
And I think I've mentioned this once or twice before,
But it's germane now and actually all the time.
The old proverb is something like,
A fool takes food from the plate but forgets to put it in his mouth.
And I want to urge you,
And I also want to,
In one respect,
Warn you that the teachings that you receive here,
Or if you join me on Wednesdays and Sundays when I speak,
They're not for amusement.
They're not for the sake of a temporary mollification of whatever the misery may have been of the day before or our life.
It is so that we can begin to apply to our lives the principles and the powers behind them that we feel move within us when we hear a truthful principle and realize that that is something we not only know is good and right for us,
But that it needs to be a part of our life on a moment-to-moment,
Certainly day-to-day basis.
That's why the old proverb says,
The fool takes food from the plate but doesn't put it in his mouth.
What is this food?
The fool doesn't put into his mouth.
In one respect,
To use a word,
This food are the impressions that we receive.
When I'm sitting here talking to you and I'm looking at this computer screen,
Looking at this strange man,
I'm looking at myself talking,
Or I pick up my head and I look around like I like to do and see the world of the forest outside of me.
Every last one of these moments is,
In fact,
An experience born of a reflection in my consciousness.
So I look out and I see the forest.
It's reflected in this consciousness,
And this consciousness in its sleep believes that the forest it sees outside of itself is,
In fact,
Exterior to itself.
When the experience of the forest,
The experience of myself,
The impressions of those things are unfolding within me in every moment,
Those impressions are food.
They are the way in which we come to know what is true and what we eventually realize is false,
Which is what our topic for today is.
Just to bring you in now,
I think we've set the stage.
Would you agree,
And you can please line up over here,
Say yeah,
Yay or nay,
What's worse than being negative?
I actually,
If it was possible for you to be a human being who can't avoid being negative for a long time,
But who never ever in your life ever again gave yourself over to those waves of negative thoughts and feelings that always carry you to some dangerous shoal where you suffer crashing onto it,
Wouldn't you give up anything to be liberated from those painful pushing,
Prodding,
Pulling thoughts and feelings?
Yes or no?
Wouldn't you?
I tell you it's possible,
Not just possible.
It's the purpose of your existence because until we understand this false relationship that we have with negative thoughts and feelings,
We can't enter into the truth that is working nonstop to show us that.
So first a little basis,
Some of you who've studied with me already know this,
But I need to set the stage every time,
At least briefly.
What is the source of these negative thoughts and feelings?
Now to us,
Again to this divided mind who looks out and sees that person scowling or the news or whatever,
The weather,
We look out and we see the world and we say,
Well,
The world that I see is responsible for my suffering.
No,
It is not responsible for your suffering.
The responsibility for your suffering belongs to the nature of the seer,
Not what is seeing because you can't separate what you see outside of you from the experience of it within you.
Now the nature of the seer,
Meaning this part of us that looks out and wants to blame the world outside of us for our pain,
Those ensuing negative thoughts and feelings that kind of wrap all of those unwanted moments into something solid that we can get our hands on,
Those negative thoughts and feelings,
They themselves have a source.
Now we're kind of using these Russian dolls,
You know,
Doll set within doll within doll,
You've seen them,
Nesting dolls,
Elephants.
The source of these,
You can't have a negative thought or feeling without it being preceded by some form of instantaneous resistance.
So let's see this.
This is food.
So the speaker is saying that I can't have this negative thought or feeling that didn't follow on the heels of some resistance to a moment.
So that I mustn't look just to the moment for the source of this suffering.
I must recognize that the source of these negative thoughts and feelings can't be separated from the resistance that was in me in that moment.
I came into that moment not knowing I was bearing something that was going to resist that event.
And that resistance that is there all of the time has a source itself.
That's what we're to look at this morning,
This afternoon,
This evening.
The unseen source of all of our psychological suffering is born out of a relationship,
An unconscious relationship,
Where we live with this idea that somehow or other we know how life is supposed to be.
The suffering is between this conflict that we have with the moment is between what we will call in this talk,
The knower.
And the knower means our identification with an unconscious nature that is in a constant,
A perpetual dream that it knows exactly how the moment's supposed to unfold.
It knows how I'm supposed to sound.
It knows what I'm supposed to present.
It knows that I shouldn't be wearing this shirt.
Or it knows that it loves us.
It makes no difference.
There is something with us every split second of our life that enters into every moment with us that before we enter into that moment of real life has already laid claim to life as it should be presented to us so that we don't suffer from what?
What do we suffer from?
We suffer from being in a conflict when that knower runs into moments that proves to it,
It gives it evidence that it doesn't know what it imagines it does.
This is the essential conflict.
I don't know that I live from someone,
Something,
An unconscious nature that is fully conditioned and that looks at every moment and without I knowing it prior,
Weighs every moment in this body of comparative experience and then uses the past experience and comparison to prove to itself whether that moment is right or wrong,
Good or bad for it.
So that consciousness in essence is never not in conflict.
You should be able to see this,
The evidence of your life,
Just like that.
The smallest thing,
Waves of unconscious resistance start washing over us.
I don't like how he's talking.
I don't like the way she looks.
I look at the thermometer.
Oh,
Look at me.
I looked in the mirror.
Oh my God,
What's wrong?
What's this wrinkle?
What's this pain?
Waves of unconscious resistance at the drop of a hat followed by what?
Followed by a sliding quite literally into a kind of false certainty that the moment we're experiencing is wrong,
That it shouldn't be like that.
You shouldn't be,
I shouldn't be.
So that we have this very familiar,
I might add,
I'm asking you to see it,
A dreaded uncertainty fills this moment.
Every time I have resistance and the negative thoughts start to pour in,
It's because some terrible sense of uncertainty has come over me.
And in that uncertainty,
I'm lost.
And so I start looking for certainty,
Please.
I start looking for certainty in the moment where this negativity comes over me.
And where do I find the certainty in that moment when I start to feel this fear?
I find certainty in blame.
I find certainty in my justifications for why I am,
Or you are,
Or it is like that.
I find certainty in my hope for tomorrow when I get past whatever this problem is I'm meeting now that I have to run from or fight with,
Because certainly I'll have no contentment while this is going on,
But my mind will promise me the certainty of a time to come,
Whether it's just a pleasure to come or some kingdom to come that this same sleeping brain imagines to rescue itself from a conflict it never stops creating within itself because of its divided nature.
Yes,
Joan,
It's true.
The older we get,
The more resistance we have.
Actually,
It's not the more resistance we have,
It's the more likely we are to turn our attention over to this mechanical nature that wants to find something to define itself through.
At least I have the certainty of knowing I hate my life.
I have the certainty of being afraid.
Imagine for a moment if you can hear me.
And every teaching,
True teaching anyway,
Describes this relationship that I'm talking to you about right now.
There is this beginning,
What we can call a certain false certainty,
Where I don't ever think to myself,
I don't know what's going on.
There's not a moment in my life.
If I'm suffering,
It never occurs to me ever that I don't know why I'm suffering.
I'm suffering for this,
That,
And the other,
For a time in the past or a time I fear may be coming.
I always know why I'm suffering.
You would think God help us at a certain point when I've known for 4,
000 years why I'm suffering.
When humanity has been claiming to know the source of its suffering for thousands and thousands of years,
And the suffering isn't better,
It's more hidden,
More occult,
And more comprehensive,
More overriding.
We do not know,
But we're sure we do.
So there is this false certainty.
I know what's going on,
And I know what to do about it,
But then by the grace of God,
And it is by the grace of God,
By whatever name you wish to give that living,
Loving intelligence that overrides and sees to the arrangement of all things.
By the grace of God,
One day a person looks up and says,
You know,
I'm tired of being anxious and afraid.
I'm tired of having enemies,
Of regretting these things,
Of living with this worry.
I'm tired of that,
And I have to start questioning my own reactions.
I don't know what will happen,
But instead of this false knowing,
I'm beginning to have a kind of uncertainty with me,
And I hate it.
You know,
Nothing is more vile to a sleeping human being than uncertainty,
Because part of our conditioning is that at no point in time are we meant to feel uncertain about anything,
Because to feel uncertain is to live with this identity that is shaking and quaking at every breeze that passes over and through it.
So this uncertainty,
And this is a critical juncture in a person's path.
Where we run from uncertainty,
You as an aspirant will begin to understand the necessity of entering into it,
Not running from it,
Not believing you understand it,
But realizing with great depth and clarity,
I don't understand this uncertainty,
And the only way I will ever be able to have real certainty is by moving into this uncertainty,
By ridding myself because I see the uselessness of it,
Of all the things that I go back into the past to try to figure out how it applies to this moment,
Of every future to come,
Where I see myself exiting this dark tunnel,
All of that has to go,
Because all of those thoughts and feelings are buffers,
They are parts of ourselves that stand between the possibility of moving from this false certainty into this dark night of the soul,
This uncertainty where I do not know what is or will be,
Yet I know that I cannot run from it,
Into eventually the true certainty of recognizing that I no longer need to fear the things that I do,
I no longer need these negative thoughts and feelings,
Because now I can find out the truth for myself,
Whether or not this resistance has validity,
Let alone whether I need to be a victim of what my own consciousness is telling me has taken place,
That is the source of this conflict and all of the pain that I have.
Gosh,
20 minutes into the talk already,
Let's take a deep breath,
I need you to see things with me,
I need you to take the impression and not just take it from the plate,
We need it to go into us deeply,
From the beginning of our life,
Our life is molded by a consciousness that we enter into,
It is not my consciousness,
It is not your consciousness,
We are responsible for the relationship of this consciousness to the world that stirs it,
But we are brought into a consciousness and we're molded into this idea from the very beginning that our life is meant to be a journey into the known,
From the outset,
God I can look back so clearly now,
Watching my mom and my dad and their business partners and their friends,
Looking at my buddy that got that Ferrari or that new car,
Whatever he got,
And the arrogance,
The certainty he had and my uncertainty,
Because I couldn't have,
This certainty that life should be the known,
That it is a journey into who I should be,
That's what I think,
Life is this journey into knowing who I should be,
A journey into knowing who I shouldn't be,
Predicated on all of these aspirations of acquiring this knowledge that if I just get this and do that I'll be someone special,
It's a journey that I should have things,
A journey into pride over possessions,
All of the things that we've been inculcated with,
That's what we believe,
This journey is this journey into the known,
It is a journey in hopes like Saint Paul said,
It is a journey into the hope of things seen,
And elementary Watson,
A journey into hope and things seen,
Well the things I see are from memory,
So whatever it is that I hope I see in my life is coming to me from my own past,
Which means I'm not journeying into a new life,
I'm journeying back into the content of a consciousness that keeps spilling itself out and calling the junk that pours out new,
Because it has sensation connected to it,
And then it can be reconfigured and I can call that starting over,
So this journey into the known if you're following me is a journey into fear,
Because anything that isn't part of the known causes me to shake,
It is a journey into anxiety,
Because anything that doesn't line up with what I believe life should be like causes me to become anxious,
It's a journey without understanding it,
If you're following me into a world where every last moment of my resistance to a given moment proves that I know how the moment should be,
When the resistance doesn't prove I know how the moment should be,
The resistance proves I don't know myself at all,
The resistance proves I don't know the meaning of the moment,
As opposed to the way I see it,
Which is my resistance tells me I do know the meaning of the moment,
So it's no exaggeration to say that our resistance to every last one of these moments begins with an unconscious kind of knowing identification with the past that goes with us not to make the crooked places straight,
But to make sure that we run into every possible problem that is born out of possessing this knowledge you should be,
This shouldn't be happening,
It runs so deep,
Because it tells us that we know not just what should be waiting for us around the corner,
But how it should be waiting,
And who should be having it waiting for us,
And the way it's meant to unfold once we get there,
Surely you've seen this,
Our life is the evidence of it,
You know as you get older,
I don't know how old you are out there,
But I can promise you it's one consciousness,
You become increasingly unwilling to experience anything outside of the known,
That's what all that no,
No,
No,
It's all this trepidation,
Everything,
Everything,
So that our world,
Try to see this,
So our world instead of as it's intended to be this ever expanding enlarged sense of discovery,
Where who and what I am is forever being revealed anew with its new possibilities,
It gets into a smaller and smaller crucible until the thing is a prison made up of all of this negative reaction to anything that's unlike what I want and know,
That's hell isn't it,
Now that doesn't mean just because you can repeat what I've said or sense the truth of it,
That you're free of it,
That's what it means to take the food from the plate but not put it in your mouth,
To put it in your mouth means I'm going to have to somehow or other enter into this consciousness,
This world that it has created and that continues to reincarnate itself through me,
I'm going to have to get into it,
And with God as my witness that consciousness does not want to get in there and mix it up,
It wants to avoid every mess that it is made,
So that it can blame the mess on someone or something else or look to the past or the future to explain how it can find a place outside of those problems,
It doesn't exist,
Life proves it to us,
So I got to keep going,
Let's take a deep breath,
If our life isn't a journey into the known and ever so quickly,
If you went on the in the bar here,
You understand that at least you can feel that this life can't be a journey into the known,
If it is I'm dead before I begin,
I am nothing but the reincarnation of my father and my mother and they are reincarnation of that consciousness,
That's all it is,
The content of an unconscious nature,
Reconfiguring itself,
Spitting itself out into the physical world and producing in people the sensation of something new,
When no sensation is new by the way,
So if our real journey isn't into the known,
Then what is it?
What is it?
If it's not into the known,
What is it?
The answer is not that exciting when you first,
Well it's exciting when you think yourself that you understand it,
But it means that the real journey is what?
Into what I don't know,
Look if I slow down for a moment,
I hate,
In a way I kind of hate to take the time because I want to be able to finish the notes I've prepared for you,
But if you could be still enough,
You would but if you could be still enough,
You would see that there is this incessant measuring,
Not just of the moment that you're in because that might be static or you might be in a place quite familiar,
But the mind is just always coughing up the content of some other experience,
Some possibility and the minute the mind coughs that up,
It begins to analyze what it has coughed up from the content of itself and then it tries to figure out,
Is this good or bad?
Am I safe?
Am I in danger?
What am I to do?
And it's just this constant pressure,
This pain,
This conflict and this ensuing resistance that the consciousness creates for itself within itself.
This is the essential pain and in a talk to come later,
This is also the source of all the desires that come up in us because we're forever trying to free ourselves from a self-inflicted pain,
But that's another story.
Now,
More knowledge,
Vital.
You've heard me speak of this before,
But I'll just cover it quickly.
There is no such thing as a moment in life that can actually push against your or my own best interests.
No such thing as a moment in life that can push against your or my own best interests.
Now the mind,
The sleeping mind goes,
No,
That's not true.
What about this?
And what if I lost that?
And I got diagnosed.
You can see,
And if you can't,
I can't possibly help you see anything,
That in your life,
What you have called those moments where life was pushing against what you need.
I shouldn't be sick.
I shouldn't lose my job.
The world shouldn't be this way.
All of that,
At some point,
Those lessons that came turned out to be the most valuable thing in the world.
You either feel this way or you don't.
I wouldn't give up one of these unwanted experiences in my life for all the money in the world.
Because even though I couldn't use them then,
They did produce a gradual understanding that it was possible to see that the problem wasn't the moment,
But the person that entered into it.
And that's always the nature,
This unconscious person,
This persona,
This personality.
And it runs into everything and anything that challenges it.
Then it tries to change the world according to its own image.
It changes the world according to its own image and it meets itself again,
Unendingly.
So the lessons are repeatedly,
I'm meeting myself.
I just don't want the lesson because it doesn't line up with what I know.
And what I know is that I couldn't possibly be meeting myself because if I was,
This world would be delightful.
God,
I hope you get the humor in that.
And if you don't,
This isn't the place for you.
No such thing as a moment that can push against our own best interests.
Why?
Because it is in our own true best interest to fulfill the purpose of every moment that is given to us.
And every moment that is given to us,
And all moments are given to us,
Are for the purpose of bringing about a revelation in this consciousness as to its true relationship to creation.
Every moment,
Every purpose in that moment.
So that we could begin conceivably,
And one day it'll be true for you,
God willing,
That when these moments come and this wave of resistance starts to appear,
It would be possible to realize that this resistance that I'm feeling right now,
If I haven't already been captured and snared in those suffering thoughts and feelings,
This is a negative effect of a belief that somehow or other this consciousness is separate from the cause of its own stirring.
So that I could begin,
Instead of letting my mind tell me what the cause of this pain is,
I could become a student of effect.
I could become a man or woman who begins to recognize it's not the moment that produces the experience we don't want.
Rather,
What we experience in that moment that we don't want is the sudden upheaval of a consciousness that's been laying asleep,
Dormant in the dark of itself,
And suddenly making itself known because the world isn't the way it knows it should be.
And so they fight,
Fight,
Conflict,
Fight,
Fight to be a student of the moment.
Not someone that is set in that moment by what he or she believes the moment should be bringing to them.
Do you see the difference in this?
I mean,
Just for a second,
Don't you find it,
And please let this sink in,
Don't you find it strange that the only time that you're upset with life is when you remember that that moment shouldn't be the way it is?
Think with me,
Think with me.
The only time you're upset at life is when you remember something you don't want about that moment,
Which is the only way you.
.
.
I actually have to remember what's wrong with the moment.
Gosh,
Try to see it.
It's deep enough for me to take a moment here.
Suddenly my wife comes down and there's a problem,
I get a call from the foundation,
There's some whatever it might be.
Oh,
No,
No,
No,
No.
I don't want it,
I don't want it.
Now,
In those moments to us,
It seems,
Because of our unconscious nature,
Being asleep,
It seems like the moment we don't want has just appeared.
But the moment we don't want hasn't just appeared because the moment that we don't want can't appear without me knowing I don't want that moment,
Without me,
Something in me remembering that the moment shouldn't be that way.
If the moment is new always,
And it is,
Then anything in me that meets it with,
Oh,
No,
I don't want that,
Means it knows that moment already.
So I'm actually remanded over to a level of consciousness that dredges up from the darkness of its dank memory,
Past experiences with similar situations where there was pain,
Again,
Because I was full of resistance,
Certain that it shouldn't be like that.
And I'm remanded over to that flood of thoughts and feelings that then,
Once I'm caught up in them,
Just carry me off and begin to tell me what it is that I need to do and how to get it fixed.
So what do you think is the solution?
What do you think is the solution?
What has to happen apart from our willingness to recognize that if we're not present to ourselves,
Then we are allowing life to be presented to us through a nature that knows nothing about it at all.
The next wave of resistance,
And we know it's coming,
You don't even need to leave your bed in the morning.
You can lay in bed in the morning and listen to the broken thoughts and feelings,
Each and every one trying to find certainty,
And each and every one stirring more uncertainty,
Trying to get to the promised land where everything is known and settled,
Which,
By the way,
Is called death.
You can begin to feel those waves of resistance and recognize that in that moment I can do one of two things.
I can attend,
As I've always done,
To the will of this consciousness,
This unconscious nature that is telling me that it knows what has happened or what will or what did.
It always starts with that.
It says,
This is what's going on,
And as it tells me,
As it tells you what's going on,
Then it begins to resist its own interpretation.
My mind says,
He shouldn't be like that.
Well,
It couldn't just stand like that unless I have all of the associated thoughts and feelings of the past and from the past why he shouldn't be like that,
And maybe I just met him or her so that all of the associated thoughts and feelings about why he shouldn't be like that has nothing to do with that person.
He or she's being dressed and branded in the bitter dregs of past experience,
Telling me that I know why he is that way,
And now I have the knowledge of who I am as someone different than he or she is,
So I'm set against them,
And there's never a chance not just to learn something about another human being but about myself.
I have to use these moments.
How?
Quick story.
I don't know if you're familiar with it.
It's a great old tale.
I don't know from whence it comes,
Certainly thousands of years ago.
I don't know that there's any one truer version or not,
And keep in mind that we're talking about the moment where we are overcome by something that is resisting whatever the event is,
Whatever he or she is saying or doing,
Overcome with resistance to it,
And recognizing that we need to use the resistance to that moment as a way to reverse the usual experience of the moment,
Where instead of letting it tell us what is true,
We use the resistance to enter into the awareness of that moment so that we might learn for ourselves what is true,
Not just about the moment but about this consciousness that is being revealed by it.
We want to turn around,
As Christ would say,
Metanoia,
To repent.
We want to turn around in that moment.
Why?
So that we can enter into what we don't understand,
Not fear what we don't understand,
But understand it's possible for us to have new self-understanding.
So the story,
Old story,
Is this.
Here's this master,
And he's sitting with a group of students on a seashore,
And he's talking to them about the things we're talking about,
And as serendipitous as it is,
And somehow it always is in real life if you're present enough.
While they're sitting there,
A man walks up to them,
And as he's standing there,
Everybody,
Including the teacher,
Can see this man is actually made of salt.
Now,
I don't know if I should do this ever so quickly.
Lot's wife was turned into a pillar of salt because she refused to leave the known,
And in the resistance to the possibility even of discovering there was something,
Another place provided for her,
She preferred to remain with the sense of self that knew herself,
And she was,
She turned into this pillar of salt.
Now,
Let's just imagine for a moment that this pillar of salt has had,
Recognizes what's happened to itself,
And we'll make this,
Now we'll make it a woman standing there next to the student and says to the teacher something like,
I want to become a part of the ocean,
Meaning I want to give up this crystallized fearful self.
I want to be part of that ocean,
But I mean,
What do you think?
Which part of it should I enter into in order to know it?
And the teacher looks up to the woman of salt and says,
Just walk in,
Start swimming around,
Do that,
And everything else that needs to happen will take place exactly as it should,
Meaning that as I enter into the unknown and discover the only reason there's fear of it is because of a consciousness that wants nothing to do with being reborn,
With joining into this broader ocean of true life,
Then I gradually lose this identification I have with it,
With myself.
It melts away.
It dissolves.
That's actually a true teaching.
As you work,
If you will work,
Who and what you are,
Take yourself to be now,
Will dissolve.
You'll actually experience yourself dissolving.
And please,
So you understand it,
On one hand,
That sounds fantastic,
But until you actually begin to go through entering into this uncertainty,
You will not know that this is the stage that leads to real certainty,
But not until the dissolution has taken place.
So let me put up a last key lesson here to summarize the talk,
And then we'll be on our way.
Join me tomorrow.
I'm talking tomorrow for free.
There's nothing to join.
I speak on Wednesdays and Fridays,
Wednesdays and Sundays,
Wednesday evenings and Sunday mornings,
Nothing to join.
Just come and listen.
Take in the impressions.
Here's the last key lesson.
And if you wouldn't mind,
Please don't post for a moment because I'm going to ask Kate to put it up on the comment board here so you can have it.
Here it is.
There is no such thing as a negative thought that can be true to you,
Let alone a fearful feeling that understands what it pretends to know.
There is no such thing as a negative thought that can be true to you,
Let alone a fearful feeling that understands what it pretends to know.
Use your life to die to this conditioned consciousness that for its knowing is dying,
So that in dying to the known and in your willingness at least to explore the relationship of the conflict it creates,
You can begin to create for yourself a new relationship with a new order of intelligence,
Of a new order of love,
That will see to it that you are forever certain because you are forever being made new in certainty itself.
