GF Live 8-13-22 The Love We Give Is The Love We Get

I want to talk about something that I suppose in one respect is difficult for us to understand.

Because so much of the way in which we interact with ourselves and the world around us has built into those relationships really a set of well-conditioned,

Well-defined excuses for being the way we are and for doing the things that we do in the world.

So many times over the many years,

40 plus now,

That I've been teaching,

I hear pretty much the same excuses.

And nobody likes to,

Do you like to be called out on an excuse?

Do you make an excuse?

You know,

The very fact that I have to make an excuse represents the fact that I'm not being honest with myself.

So I want to look at something that if we study together and see it clearly,

We can begin no matter what our circumstances are in this world.

And we're all here under diverse circumstances.

But circumstances must never be what determines our relationship to the moment,

To each other.

Circumstances must never be what determines whether or not our eye is on the prize of liberation,

Of freedom.

And it's really quite a bit,

I could almost just talk about that one idea for the 30 or 40 minutes we'll have together,

Is that our life is largely circumstantial.

And it's not meant to be.

Circumstances are actually meant to serve the consciousness,

Believe it or not,

That has created those circumstances so that our consciousness,

The awareness we have of ourselves,

Can begin to become aware of itself through the circumstances it's created.

We never really want to take responsibility for the anger or the grief or the frustration that we feel in unwanted moments,

Because we look at the circumstances and blame them for the content of our consciousness.

The circumstances are not the content of our consciousness.

The content of our consciousness creates our circumstances.

It's how we see life through this consciousness.

So I want to talk about how do we use our circumstances?

How can we begin to win our freedom given that our,

And we are,

There is a certain inherent captivity.

We're in a world where by hook or crook we must survive.

We must,

We need to have food and clothing and shelter.

And one would argue that we don't need,

As most of us believe,

A certain.

.

.

Ahh.

.

.

Let's put it this way,

That when we put what pleases us before what can free us,

We have enclosed ourselves in a prison without knowing it,

And don't know it because we have enough pleasure in that prison to hide from ourselves the fact that we're not free.

So let me get started.

I have a couple of stories that I want to share with you.

We serve,

You and I,

In this world what we must.

Render unto Caesar what is Caesar said Christ,

And you can find that across the board.

No avatar,

No Buddha,

No wise man would ever say,

No wise woman would ever tell you that you can just disappear and not serve what you must given what you have brought into this world with you and your responsibilities that you've acquired.

Mostly by accident.

I have a family,

I have a business,

Whatever it is that I've gotten involved in.

If I have a responsibility,

I have to serve that responsibility.

But I am not meant,

As we are presently,

See ourselves as someone who must serve that worldly responsibility at the cost of my spiritual development.

They are not exclusive,

And this is the big rub.

We do and become in this world what we love.

We do and become in this world what we love.

And in a manner of speaking,

There is such great hope in that truth.

Because it's a form of justice.

If I say I love God,

If I say I love Christ,

If I say I love truth,

If I say I love the Tao,

Whatever,

If I say I love that,

But then I spend all of my time,

All of my energy is consumed with thinking about him and her and this and that,

Where I'm going,

What I've got,

How do I make sure everything stays up.

If my mind is occupied with the idea of security as this mind and this consciousness has developed it,

Then I can say that I love truth,

But I serve what I love.

And while I have to serve certain things in this world,

I do not have to serve this world at the cost of what I love.

In the New Testament,

I think there's a passage that says,

Let us not love in word,

Neither in tongue,

But in deed and in truth.

Meaning,

Let us not love through what we affirm that we say we love,

But let us love what we do and show it through our actions.

And our actions,

Again,

The world is going to take up time.

We have to make our way.

But we can be doing something while we're making our way that allows us to begin to understand that we are in relationship in this world in such a way that we can begin to see.

And I'll clarify this now,

When you see a beautiful moment,

It's natural to love it.

It's natural to want to give yourself to that.

But what isn't seen inside of that moment where we become aware of that beauty is that our awareness of beauty is the experience of the unity between heaven and earth.

Our awareness of beauty is the experience of a unity between heaven and earth.

That's the real beauty is the unity of two kingdoms,

Of an integration that takes place between an inherent possibility in our consciousness.

And then the world that is reflected in it,

Because there is,

And we can see it,

Another example,

If you can see certain things and you feel the beauty and you feel the balance,

You watch some artist of some kind,

You know you're in the presence of something that draws you to it.

You know that there is a possibility that if you feel something like that,

Then you can work your way toward it.

A man sees a ballet artist,

He listens to a virtuoso on the violin,

You watch it,

She listens to some master vocalist,

Whatever it may be.

We're drawn to those things because there is a corresponding relationship between what we see in the world,

Our experience of it,

And the fact that the experience of it is our consciousness being awakened to its own content,

Its own possibility for a moment.

So the love I have for someone or something who has mastered,

Who is beautiful in it,

Is because I can feel the beauty and I'm drawn to wanting to integrate that into my life.

So maybe I become interested in ballet or song or some activity.

But the point is here is that it is possible for us to close the gap between what is seemingly outside of us and above us,

And what it is within us that is aware of that element.

We are created to close the distance between ourselves and what is beautiful,

Between what we love.

And in this instance,

We are created to close what we see as a distance between ourselves and the divine.

Because in the end,

That's what liberation is.

Liberation is understanding that we are created to unite heaven and earth within ourselves.

That all that is true and timeless and beautiful is intended to be our moment-to-moment experience as our consciousness gazes upon and reflects within itself that higher reality.

How do we close that gap?

Again,

The context of this talk is I'm a man,

I'm a woman in this world,

I've got kids,

I've got a business,

I've got all the things that I've done that brought me to this point,

And that part of being brought to this point is the recognition that this point is not going to finish things for me.

That where I am and what I've done is not the end of there's something that needs to be done,

There's more.

How do we close the gap?

So let me tell you a story,

First story.

Here's two brothers,

And they're just like you and I,

They live in a certain part of the world,

And they've done fairly well by themselves,

But they have this innate feeling as if they're missing something from their life,

As you must have or you wouldn't be here listening to me.

Now,

What is this innate feeling of missing something?

What's the root of what I call this divine dissatisfaction?

And the root of this divine dissatisfaction,

Of this sense of is that all there is,

Is because this consciousness,

Our soul,

This being,

Is intended to be in relationship with something ceaselessly,

So that in its ceaseless relationship with this other order of reality,

With the kingdom of heaven,

If you will,

That it is forever being brought into the awareness of its own possibilities.

So it is ceaselessly being reborn,

Ceaselessly going through changes that it recognizes as mandatory,

But that isn't defined by it,

It becomes the ground of all of these changes,

The ground of beauty.

So these two brothers,

They're just like you and I,

Depending on where you are in your own life,

They know that something is missing,

And so they hear,

They understand that there is a possibility of another kingdom,

And they spend their time and their work as they can give it to it to try to receive an invitation from the king of this distant country,

So that they might,

By invitation only I might add,

Go and become part of that kingdom where they sense,

As best can be described,

That they would be more consistently,

Continuously fulfilled as a human being,

They would know themselves more truly,

More fully.

So at long last,

Having to divide their time up between the world that they serve,

And wish to belong to this other kingdom,

To this love,

To what they value,

They finally get an invitation from the king,

It comes,

It's delivered.

And by the way,

We're always getting invitations from the king,

From the higher world.

And when it comes,

They recognize that this is,

Well here's what has to be done.

And so they travel to a place on the coast where they are to board a ship that is to take them to this island where this kingdom is.

But when they get to the place where this ship is supposed to depart,

The docks there are all guarded,

And naturally they're guarded by the,

Those who work for the harbor master to ensure that no one sneaks onto the boat,

Because that's not how it works.

And so they're not allowed in because the guards won't let them in,

So they know they have to go and find the harbor master in order to have the harbor master let the guards know that they are entitled,

They're invited to be on this ship.

So they go to the harbor master's door and they knock,

And they knock,

And they knock,

And they knock for like 10,

15 minutes,

You know,

Knock,

Knock,

Knock.

Nobody answers.

They also know that the boat leaves with the morning tide when it comes in,

And it's getting close to that,

And they're not sure what to do.

They knock,

And they're frustrated,

Nothing's opening,

And as they're standing there,

The two brothers looking at each other and knocking on the door,

Looking in the window,

No one's there,

One of the brothers happens to hear some music and catches the smell of coffee and maybe a beautiful woman walking and serving outside in the cafeteria,

Whatever it is,

And he's drawn right away to go get something to eat and to drink and to partake in whatever it is that his mind has delivered him to.

And he leaves the other brother there.

And the other brother,

He's drawn too,

He wants what the world has to offer,

It's cold,

How nice it would be,

But he also knows there's something that comes before that.

And so while the one brother leaves,

The other brother stays there.

Now fast forward half hour,

And the brother who went to get the coffee comes and he sees his brother's no longer at the harbor master door,

And he looks down at the dock,

And there's the ship and it's sailing,

And he looks and his brother is standing on the railing of the boat.

And he runs after the boat when the boat doesn't stop,

And he goes,

Brother,

What's going on?

How did you get on board?

Wait for me.

He says,

That's not my ship,

I can't control it.

You can't go without me,

I don't want to.

He said,

But we're on our way.

And he said,

Well,

How did you get on board?

The one brother yells at him as the last thing they're going to exchange.

How did you get on board?

And the brother on the ship says,

After you left,

He said,

I kept knocking.

I just kept knocking,

And I don't know what the difference was,

But after a few more minutes,

The harbor master came,

He opened the door,

I showed him our invitation,

He led me to the ship,

He got me past the guards,

And I hope you can get here,

Brother.

Now,

I want to tell you a secret.

It's an open secret to tell you the truth,

But there's a difference between knowing a secret and acting on it.

When it comes to one's wish to awaken,

To be liberated,

How about just to be a true,

Decent human being?

You don't need strength to knock.

You don't need wisdom to knock.

You don't need friends in high places.

You don't need influences,

Influence in the world.

You don't need people to tell you you're great.

You don't need teachers to tell you what to do.

You just need to knock,

A willingness to keep knocking.

To persist with your wish to be free in spite of the circumstances that you must deal with because of the karma of your life up to that point.

Your karma is not your destiny.

Your karma,

Meaning what you have and I have created in this world,

Largely through ignorance and convenience,

Through social contrivance.

The things that we have created in our life that we presently serve and believe we must for fear of losing whatever it is that we think we've got.

All of those things have to be understood and put into their proper place.

And I want to keep repeating this because I'm not saying,

I remember years ago I was talking about something along these lines to a bunch of students when I lived in Ohio,

California.

And I got a call like 11 o'clock one night from a student and she said,

I'm being,

What do they do when they bounce you out of your apartment?

I'm being thrown out of my apartment and I don't have any food.

Will you help me?

I said,

Well,

I can't help you with that.

How did you get like that?

She said,

Well,

I was waiting for God to give me everything that I needed.

Evicted,

Thank you.

I said,

Well,

Where did you get the idea that God is going to come and pay your rent and deliver food?

God isn't an Uber service.

See,

That's what we think.

And we also think that if we continue to serve the world,

That one day there will be enough time to do what we love.

And I'm telling you,

It's not true.

They must be done co-jointly.

That means that we must begin to understand.

Let me tell you another story.

Here is a beautiful princess and she's been captured by an evil wizard who is jealous not only of her beauty and her relationship to the king,

Her father.

But who,

Because of his nature,

He wants to,

He's obsessed with her.

He wants to own her.

He wants her to love him.

And the only way he knows to get someone to love him is to possess her.

For us,

So much of our idea of what love is is connected to possession.

Love has nothing to do with possession.

So he captures her,

Takes him off to his dark castle someplace,

And he's got her locked up there.

And he keeps telling her,

You've seen this in the movies,

One day,

One day you will love me,

But until then,

You know,

You're bound to serve me because if you don't,

I'll do this,

That or the other,

All the threats.

And finally,

The princess looks at him after a certain amount of time,

And you'll understand this,

She says,

You may have bound me in service to you,

But you can't tell me what to love.

I will keep my heart to myself,

And I will serve what I love,

Even if I have to sit here and serve you.

You may be able to run what I do,

But you do not run what I love.

See,

That's what I'm trying to get at,

That there's a certain relationship that we are created to have with this world by which,

Even though we can't understand it fully,

I can see there are limits to my present understanding,

There's no doubt about it.

And yet the limit to my present understanding wouldn't exist without an understanding that was showing me that.

Please see that with me.

I see that I don't have the patience,

I would like to be a more patient person.

How in the world would it ever occur to me that I'm impatient and that it punishes me and others unless there was something in me that wasn't just that body of impatience and the way it demands things that it does,

But rather it could show me,

You know,

This hurts you and hurts others.

If I'm just fully impatient,

There's no awareness of impatience,

But the awareness of impatience belongs to something above and beyond it.

And so I can begin to understand,

I can't comprehend where this perfect patience is,

Where there's a capacity to suffer myself,

Which is the meaning of the word patience.

I don't know how to get it,

I don't know where it is,

But I know it exists.

And because I know it exists,

There's a certain faith that's actually built into that relationship that this higher order of consciousness has with what is calling to it to be in relationship with it so that patience can become a man or a woman's character.

So here we have a kind of understanding,

If you're following me,

Where something that is above me,

Even though it's within me,

Or something that is above me hits and reveals something that is beneath it,

Passive,

Not part of that system of understanding yet,

But it senses it.

And our task is to remain in the remembrance of that possibility that we have so that where I am,

I'm at my office,

Whatever I'm doing,

It doesn't matter where,

That I have to do,

I serve a supervisor at work,

I have a set of responsibilities at home,

I have children,

I have to take care of what I've been given to take care of.

But can I take care of those things,

And while I am taking care of them,

Use the moments I have while I'm doing that to serve something else,

So that I'm serving,

If you want to say this properly,

Two worlds at once.

But my first love is the first service,

And the first service is the remembrance of myself and the remembrance of what it is that I want more than anything else.

What a waste of a life to serve money,

What a waste of a life to serve your social structure,

To serve the body politic,

To serve even what you call your religious leaders or your spiritual ideas.

Liberation is not by consensus.

Liberation is the result of a human being giving him or herself consistently to what they love so that in the deliberate remembrance and relationship to what they love,

They are gradually brought into a deeper relationship with the love that put that in them there.

That wasn't a very good sentence that put that in there,

But the fact remains if you understand that,

We have our priorities messed up because something in us has determined our priorities for us,

But thank God there is a principle with a capital P,

There is a power with a capital P,

That continues to draw our attention to the fact that there are other possibilities for us to have in this life,

Even while we serve what we must serve in this world.

Let me give you an example of the last story I want to tell you.

I did write this,

It's in a book someplace,

I don't know what book it's in,

But it's a favorite story of mine,

So bear with me if you know it,

But let's put it together.

There was once a man,

We'll put him back somewhere in the fifth century,

And in those days,

And actually not too dissimilar from now,

You know,

If I go off on that tangent,

I won't finish the story.

There has always been war on this planet because there has always been fear on this planet.

And there's always been fear on this planet because humanity has for a very,

Very long time lived from a consciousness that sees itself separate from all that it observes.

And when we are apart from all that we observe,

When we believe we are apart from all that we see,

Then we are constantly looking to secure ourselves in a world so that what we see cannot come and harm us or take from us what it is that has given us our identity.

So in the end,

Even though it's not seen,

All war is the result of an identity crisis.

It is the product of a fear that exists because love has not taken its place.

Our task is to start recognizing where it is that the fear that we live with and wherever you have attachment and dependency,

Wherever you have identification with anything,

You have fear.

Our task is to begin to change out fear for love by recognizing that by the grace of God,

By the grace of love,

We can see fear.

Fear doesn't know anything about love at all.

It just knows what it loves.

And what it loves is everything that keeps it fearful.

But let me go with the story so I can marry all this to you.

So here's a man,

Fifth century,

And he's captured.

One warring country comes and takes over another country and captures the men there and puts them on these slave boats,

Rowing dignitaries from one coast to the next,

One harbor to the next.

And that was his life for many years,

Along with a line of others who were like himself chained to the oars on either side of the ship.

And he lived like that in a nightmarish condition of real hardship.

I don't think we can imagine it.

I don't think we can imagine for the most part the horrors of any war.

But then we blame those who make war instead of seeing where it is that our consciousness is complicit with its demands and attachments.

It's tough stuff,

But Mr.

Howard used to say the medicine is bitter but it heals.

So here's our man.

But he,

Like you,

Like myself,

He was different than all the others on the ship.

While the others on the ship would lament their situation,

Sit and hate the guards,

Hate the dignitaries,

Daydream about the past,

Think to themselves what they would eat if they only got off the ship,

All the ways in which the mind distracts itself.

He always did one thing that none of the others did.

And what this man would do,

Our hero,

The indwelling soul that seeks liberation but has found itself encased in not just a body but the consciousness of a body.

That by its very nature serves the world that created it.

So it's not just the world that consciousness has made with all of its circumstances but the body itself serves this world.

It is part of nature.

So here's this man and he understands he must serve something else.

But how is he to do that?

Under what circumstances?

And so he spends his time,

Whenever they're not rowing because you can't row 24-7,

When he's not rowing he's not daydreaming,

When he's not rowing he's not wishing he were someplace else.

When he's not rowing,

Meaning when he's not serving what he has to serve at work,

Driving the car,

Whatever,

He's busy carving a wooden key.

There's an old ore piece he found and he uses the cuffs,

The shackles,

And he uses them to work on this piece of wood to try to carve it into a key.

In his mind the key was to open the shackles but he was the laughing stock of all the other prisoners that row the boat,

Even the guards made fun of him.

Because there's no way that a key carved roughly from an iron shackle is ever going to open an old corroded hand cuff,

An ankle cuff,

That these poor human beings were cuffed with.

So they actually just let him go on doing it.

One of the guards actually gave our hero a leather,

A little strip of leather,

So that the man could hang the key from his chest.

And so this man,

That's what he did.

I know you don't want to hear this but he did it for years.

And years.

But he never lost sight.

He never forgot that he wasn't meant to serve the ship that he was on.

He was meant to do something else with his life.

He couldn't change,

He couldn't control,

He couldn't do one thing.

But he could remember.

And he would burnish that wooden key,

He would use his own sweat,

His own blood,

To stain it,

To burnish it,

To shape it.

He never stopped shaping it.

There was always something he could see that wasn't quite perfect about the key.

I hope you're getting the point of this.

He wanted to be in relationship with what he knew was true and free,

And give his heart and mind,

His love to that remembrance more than he wanted to hate where he was,

More than he hoped he would find some pleasure where he was.

And he did this consistently,

Because you see the improbability of his situation wasn't his concern.

That's an important idea.

The improbability of his situation wasn't his concern.

I don't know about you,

What could be more improbable than freedom when I'm filled with frustration and anger?

When my mind is dragged into some ditch to try to dig out some financial security that I hope I'll have it.

I mean,

The improbability that there is in the midst of all that,

Cuffed,

Because it feels like that.

I'm cuffed.

I have to row every day.

Some days the ship faces the right direction,

The wind comes in,

I don't have the stink of the rest of it,

It's okay,

I don't mind it,

I even forget,

Because I look out and I see the beauty of the ocean.

But that was not what he wanted.

He wanted to do the one thing that was in his power to do,

And that was to work on the key.

Yes,

Isabel,

Viktor Frankl saw that light held more than what was being experienced.

And he did not see it after the camps.

He wouldn't have become the man known as Viktor Frankl if he didn't see it while he was in the camps.

Let me go on.

So here's our hero.

Years later,

And I can guarantee you this,

Well I shouldn't say that,

I don't want you to rely on me for anything.

Years later,

I'll tell you this is true from myself,

A nobleman was being ferried on that ship where our hero was rowing.

And he had a certain heart.

He was in some ways like us,

Because all these characters are in us in every story,

There he was being carried on the ship of slaves,

And realizing there was something inherently wrong that a human being's life would be forfeit so that he could live in comfort on the deck.

Yet he was still a slave of his own passions.

But he was a man maybe in development himself,

God willing.

And he didn't really want to,

But he said,

Can I see beneath the deck,

Can I see what's going on down there?

He knew he wouldn't want to see it.

There was no glee in him.

But nevertheless,

The guards walk him down the stairs.

And when he came down there,

Right there,

Sitting right there where the stairs are,

There was our hero,

Our man,

Who was wearing that burnished stained key around his chest that was intricately carved now.

And the nobleman saw it,

Looked at the guard and the guard,

You know,

The guy's crazy.

But the nobleman was curious,

And he said,

He went to the slave,

He said,

Well,

What is this key?

What have you done?

Why would you do this?

And the slave explained how he had made over many years this key,

Using his shackles to carve it from a piece of broken ore.

And the man was still alive.

And the nobleman felt that,

And the nobleman turned to the slave keeper,

The guards,

And said,

Release this man.

Release this man.

I'm going to take him back to my home,

Where he will work for me as a master carpenter,

Because as it turns out,

I just lost one of the men who was doing that.

He will go with me and he will serve me.

The man's persistence,

His perseverance,

To keep his eye on what it was that he loved instead of letting his eye be trained on all that he resisted and regretted,

All that he wished he didn't have to do.

It won his freedom for him.

The key couldn't open the lock,

But it did open up a relationship between two worlds.

Now,

If you're not following it,

Because perhaps many of us are too literal,

That's what happens when,

However you are able to do it,

You,

Wherever you are,

Whatever your work is,

Wherever you're going through,

Right in the middle of the worst god-awful psychological storm you can be in,

To remember there is a key,

To remember that you are experiencing what you love.

Because if the thought even comes to you,

That here I am,

I'm filled with fear,

I've got anger,

I'm so worried,

I'm so nervous,

I'm so resentful,

What's going to happen?

I'm so far in the future,

Being filled with all the promise of all the beauty to come.

I'm so gone,

And right in the middle,

And if it happens and I see it,

It's because I was given it to see.

I was given it to see that my consciousness was a captive of a consciousness.

And in the moment that I can see that,

I am working on that key because I am in relationship with something above me that is showing me my consciousness and producing in that marriage something that is neither above nor below but something new.

A new relationship,

A new understanding,

And in the instance of this story,

Something new to serve that has new possibilities.

Because there is no life without service.

What we call freedom of will,

You're free to choose what you serve.

There is no such thing as a human being that doesn't serve something.

What do I serve?

Because if I can understand that I serve what I attend,

And that I attend what my mind presently produces as my possibilities,

If I serve the image of a new possibility,

I'm serving the consciousness that's a captive of its own desires.

I can serve my remembrance.

I can serve the sense,

And this is hard to put into words,

I can serve my awareness of the fact that though I do not know how to be a fearless human being,

I know that being full of fear is not who I am.

And that I'm right between the worlds,

Something showing me fear is not who I am,

Something telling me to go do the things that will make you fearless but that produce the fear in the end.

I'm right there in the middle of it,

Right in that crucible.

And I'm using my attention and my awareness at work when I'm talking with my wife,

With my husband,

When I'm driving down the street,

When I'm sitting in the restaurant waiting for the food that I'm anticipating.

When the food comes,

And there I am,

And I'm like a wolf,

I want to eat.

Every last one of those moments I can use,

Where I'm in the world to help me work on that key.

So that in working on that key and giving my love to that,

I attract to myself that which will liberate me because love in the end is liberation,

And there is no other liberation than that love.

What happens when a human being,

As I said,

Begins to have the experience of a unity between heaven and earth.

And it's in scale and levels,

But it's real and you'll find it if you will persevere,

If you will persist.

Don't fall into the trap of saying that you love God and that you spend 20 minutes a day meditating.

Don't fall into the trap of listening to a guru or a teacher and thinking that somehow through some kind of osmosis you're going to be free in some day to come.

There is no freedom in a day to come.

What has no love will never be free.

What has love is already free.

Align yourself with the part of you that love is the truth.

Give your attention to that love in the middle of the circumstances that have no love in them at all.

And you will see something miraculous take place.

But you have to do the work to find out.

42 minutes,

That's it.

Do your work.

Be safe.

Remember yourselves.

Join me.

Find me.

I talk three times a week.

Go to the profile here or search me online.

Let's get busy doing the work we need to do.

But.