Hello and good morning.
Good afternoon,
Good evening wherever you are in the world.
I'm glad that we're together and we have this time to study what we do.
Let me arrange my board here so I can see everybody is starting to log on.
Good.
Let's just sit here quietly as awake,
Aware of ourselves as we can be for a moment or two,
And not just think it.
It means to experience myself as I am right now,
Not think about myself,
Not think about what is Guy saying.
What is it like?
What am I aware of in myself?
And what is it in me if there is something indeed that doesn't want that awareness and that has maybe logged into this dialogue,
Our time together to avoid being present to oneself.
I have for the last,
I don't know,
I guess maybe week,
Maybe a little bit more than that.
I've been working on looking into contemplating really is my work,
Then come notes.
I've been contemplating a topic that we're going to go into deeply over the next couple of days,
Today a little bit,
Sunday for sure,
Tomorrow,
And then probably on Wednesday that I call the intimate enemy.
By the way,
If you want to join me for tomorrow's free talk,
Nothing to join,
Look me up on the net or go to the profile here.
There's a link.
It'll take you to my website.
Again,
Absolutely free.
And join in and listen.
But perhaps what we're going to look at this morning will help you decide whether or not this is something that you have a taste for or that you'd rather not know about.
I think it's pretty evident,
At least I hope it is for you.
I assume it is,
Otherwise you probably wouldn't be here.
We know that something has gone terribly wrong on Mother Earth.
I mean,
There's no question about it.
And our particular view of it,
Because we are in these bodies now and caught up in one way or another in the cultural,
Political,
Religious scenarios that basically define the time that we're in.
But the time that we're in now is really no different in many respects from all of the times that came before this time that we're here and can look around and experience the world that we're in.
But I think it could be said that in some ways things have deteriorated further or more accurately they show themselves with greater clarity.
And that is to coin an old phrase,
Hasn't the milk of human kindness sorrowed?
Sorrowed.
It is sorrowed.
Soured,
Which is sorrow.
Hasn't the milk of human consciousness soured?
You know,
If you've ever poured yourself a glass of milk that's soured or stirred some cream into your coffee that had gone bad,
There's no question it's instantaneous awareness.
That's not something that I want to take into my body.
But we look around and someone writes,
Kindness or consciousness.
You know,
What if,
Oh I see,
The milk of human kindness has sorrowed,
Ben,
Is what I'm saying.
And it has soured because human consciousness has gone further and further asleep,
Askew apart from itself.
If we were able,
And we can depending on our wish and our work,
To really boil this down to what is it that's going on in the world,
That's root cause.
And I think,
And you be the judge of it,
You look at it yourself,
I'm not here to lead you anywhere.
What has transpired other than a certain form of self-ignorance has become so amplified that instead of realizing that we as human beings by divine right,
By a gift,
Have the capacity to understand something directly from ourselves.
Not understand it because I heard guys speak,
Understand it because I heard some political hack or some spiritual guru,
Not because I heard somebody say something,
Not because I read it in a book,
But I have the right to transcend what I don't know about myself in every moment of my life where it's evident that I don't know something about myself.
And this has all been but obliterated because when it's evident that I don't know something about myself,
Could not be spelled out any clearer than it is in that moment than when I'm suddenly in some kind of pain.
When I'm suddenly sitting in the judgment of someone.
Please see it with me.
If we were to examine one idea,
The whole talk could end here.
We'd be done with everything that needs to be said.
And basically what needs to be said is that we keep forgetting,
Not by accident.
In a manner of speaking,
It is the action of what I call this intimate enemy.
This relationship that we have with an unconscious nature that at all costs and at great speed constantly brings us into a moment where we are given to forget that we don't know what to do about our pain.
It's always there.
But we don't see it.
Because the moment that we start to feel some kind of pain,
Fear,
Doubt,
Worry.
The instant that we start to feel that appears in us in the same moment virtually riding on the tail of the initial resistance,
The reaction of,
Oh,
No,
What's that?
Oh,
Boy,
I'm in pain.
In that very moment comes a distraction.
Just like that.
But we don't see it's a distraction.
For instance,
It doesn't seem to us that when suddenly we're in some kind of pain and a thought comes and it looks out and it says,
Yes,
Look at those people.
That's why you're in pain.
Look at this government.
Look at this climate.
Look at this world.
It never occurs to us that the thought that rides on the tail of that torment is not the solution to it,
But a covering up of the consciousness that doesn't know what to do when suddenly revealed in it is this pain.
Is this sense of disconnect of what's happening?
What do I do?
And then instead of realizing again,
I've been in a body 73 years.
How long have you been in your body?
That in that same split second.
Instead of realizing the fact is I don't know what to do with this pain that I'm feeling,
Suddenly I know what to do.
And then I get to know what to do again,
I get to know what to do again,
I get to know what to do again.
And I know nothing.
Yes,
Dean.
I don't know what to do with it.
But I do know that everything that I've done with it has done nothing.
In fact,
As part of a certain wave of an unconscious nature,
If we're willing to look at this,
It's being hoisted on humanity,
Something horrible.
And please understand,
This is not negative.
What is true and what shines light on what lives in the dark and remains false is always the most positive,
Most powerful thing a human being can do.
It may seem to you at times when you don't know what to do with your pain,
That you're in the worst,
Most vulnerable position possible.
And therefore the scramble,
The desperation to escape the circumstance floods over you.
But I'm telling you,
It is those very moments that you are the nearest to a new kind of power,
A new kind of understanding,
To engage in a new set of laws that by your very relationship to them release you from the pain.
Not distract you,
Not deliver you to a pleasure,
But prove to you that the consciousness itself that is in that pain is the problem.
So how can what that level of consciousness tells you to do with that pain possibly be anything but an intimate enemy?
I don't know if you've noticed this,
I'm just going to spell it out.
One of the reasons that we are increasingly,
And in some ways made complicit with this growing wave of self-ignorance,
Is that we are being given by the world around us more and more justification for inflicting pain on others.
We're actually told that it is our right to punish others who we see as wrong.
That's our right.
That's what we are being inculcated with.
That's the conditioning.
And that we're given this justification to inflict pain on others by the fact of being given all of these thoughts and feelings that we did not originate,
That by them we're able to look out and judge others.
Now we don't have to make this global,
It is.
We must keep it simple and personal.
For instance,
Am I not justified in resenting or trying to control or change someone that I feel is hurting me?
Of course I am.
That's my mindset.
Because the minute that that person comes to me and they in some way or another affront me or hurt me or disrespect me or whatever that may be,
In that split second,
Something in me summarily resists what it is that they are manifesting.
And in the summary,
Resistance to whatever,
Listen by the way,
To whatever pain they are in,
Because they wouldn't be trying to exact pain or punish or disrespect any other human being unless they themselves were caught up in some kind of crucible and unable themselves to deal with that pain.
So they must release it.
They must pour it out.
They must pound someone or something else.
Whatever it might be.
God help the dog of a human being who has that kind of pain.
And it's always justified because judgment justifies.
And we never stop to think,
Well,
From whence comes this judgment?
Where comes this certainty I have that if you weren't like you are,
If you didn't say what you said,
I wouldn't be in this pain?
Where does that come from?
And the answer is it comes from a part of us that has never known what to do in those moments.
I mean,
If you look at it with me,
How is it possible to understand another human being?
As long as that understanding allows everything other than knowing what it is that they're going through,
Other than knowing the kind of pain they're in.
How can I understand another human being?
I don't understand myself.
I don't understand my own pain.
I don't understand my own doubts,
My own worries.
I think I do.
And then I do what my thoughts tell me to do.
And then I find myself in a place further downstream,
Not nearer to freedom,
But further a captive of the conditions that this consciousness that gives rise to this pain that doesn't understand itself creates for me.
So I become a victim of my own misunderstanding.
And in truth,
There is no other victimization other than what we fail to understand in the moment.
And I'm pleased because I'm going to hear it from you.
I know I'm not saying that other men and women in our lives,
Maybe our mothers,
Maybe our fathers,
Our brothers or sisters,
Maybe that toxic boss,
All the rest of that business.
You know what?
One day you have to get so tired of knowing why you're a victim that you begin to suspect the knower who makes you that victim every time it reacts and relives or runs from what feels like the source of its pain.
This is real responsibility.
Nobody wants to know the pain of anyone else.
You say,
I have enough pain of my own.
I want to ask you a question.
Is there any chance in the world that this world will ever know any kind of peace?
Forget compassion,
Kindness.
And I'm not talking about the kind of compassion and kindness that is the product of some strange egoic appearance when a human being decides I'm going to do something good.
I'm going to be nice.
I'm going to go help the world by volunteering.
That's all well and fine,
But it doesn't change the character.
It doesn't change the reason why there are people starving on this planet.
It changes nothing except allows us to skirt through one more time,
Avoiding the real condition,
Which begins with self-ignorance,
By which if we were able to understand and deal with it,
Meaning understand that there are laws that govern this world that are so far.
How do I say?
There are real laws.
And then there are the laws that we are consistently being made the victims of,
But not knowing we're made the victims of it because the laws promise that if we just obey,
That in obeying those laws will somehow or other remediate or reconcile all the crime and conflict and violence that is rampant in this world and we just don't get it.
One law that doesn't work is not fixed by another law because we were never meant to live by the laws that any government or any religion makes.
We're meant to live by the laws that God put in our heart,
That God put in our mind,
That the divine call it what you will.
The perfection of the contemplation of real meditation of being so present to oneself that it's impossible to hurt another human being because you're present to the pain and yourself.
You're present of this upheaval.
You're present to this stirring inside of ourselves,
But we know so little about it.
All the true teachings on this planet,
Whenever they have appeared,
Are the fruit of a human being,
Not an organization.
Some man,
Some woman,
Somewhere.
Of course,
We know famously the Christ,
The Buddha.
We know famously these names,
But we don't know what it is that they themselves went through.
We imagine that those men and women,
They did exactly what it is that we're meant to do.
They were an example of a life and an understanding,
Not a teaching about it.
What is this pain?
What is this sickness?
What is this crime?
What is this conflict?
No one can tell you that.
You can only find out from yourself by discovering it within yourself.
Before we judge anything,
Is it not a fact that prior to the judgment,
There is resistance to them?
Yes or no.
Before we judge anyone or including ourselves,
What is that which spurs that judgment?
And if we can look quietly,
We'll see that instantaneously,
I feel a kind of resistance to whatever this person is manifesting.
It can be your husband,
Your wife,
Brother,
Sister,
Somebody at work,
Somebody you see walking down the street.
In an instant,
Still unseen and yet that we can become aware of so as not to be made a captive of that certainty that appears.
Instantly,
I am in judgment of that person.
I am in judgment of that person because I have had a reaction to them,
And the reaction has pain in it.
You cannot judge another human being that you have not first felt that they are responsible in one way or another for some form of your pain,
Your fear,
Or your doubt.
Again,
We can look at this microcosmically,
Meaning as individuals,
Or we can look at the big picture.
We are being given reasons galore why it is that we should set ourselves against this group or that group or those people or this incident.
We're fed it daily,
And then it is justified.
And according to our preference,
Meaning our conditioning coming into this world,
We follow in lockstep,
Believing that somehow or other,
Now that I know what's wrong with them,
Now that I know what's wrong with this,
This places me in a position to judge.
And when I judge,
I am justified.
I am the justice when I judge.
And when I am the justice,
I don't have to worry about whether or not the pain that I want to inflict,
The punishment I want to ensure that you feel for being the way you are.
It never even occurs to me that everything that I'm meeting out to you began with me meeting a part of myself that I had no idea had just been met.
And in the avoidance of meeting that part of myself,
I judge you.
Yes,
And forgive them for they know what not they do,
But not forgive them for they know what not they do because I am a beautiful,
Loving Christian or Buddha person.
Not anything like that.
That's all crud.
Forgive them for they know not what they do because at last I see I know not what I do.
I understand that I've been given what to do by something in me that tells me it knows what has happened and what I must do to reconcile that.
And then to start to understand at the very bottom of it,
That I've been doing that,
I've been reincarnating that consciousness.
I have been the incarnation of an unconscious nature that repeatedly ensures me that it knows what to do and how to do it in spite of the fact that I have never yet released myself from this uncertainty,
This pain,
This right of judgment.
I've never released myself from it.
Why?
Because I don't understand the consciousness responsible for it.
Let me show you something.
I'm going to run out of time.
I didn't.
.
.
How is that possible that I could know another human being's pain?
Steve,
Everybody,
What if I didn't intellectualize this?
I was talking with a good friend of mine just last week.
Hadn't spoken with him for quite a while.
And he's been through hell.
He is in hell.
He's a self-working man,
Meaning that he's interested in these ideas.
But every time we would start to get close to something,
He would find something that related to what we were talking about in some form of memory,
In some form of image,
In some form of teaching,
In something that he read.
So that without knowing it,
He was deflecting the possibility of directly experiencing the consciousness that we were talking about.
Our consciousness,
Until I can directly experience my own consciousness,
I am a captive of whatever content that consciousness spills out in order to deal with what it doesn't know about itself.
Hands on,
Not hands off.
Thought is hands off.
Reactions are hands off.
Because every thought,
Every reaction to anything that I'm suddenly aware of in my own consciousness is a removal from that actual consciousness.
It is a form of separation.
And we mustn't separate ourselves.
We mustn't allow ourselves to be separate.
Let me show you what I'm talking about.
I was going to do this at the foundation.
I speak three times a week at the Life of Learning Foundation,
All for free.
If I went over to a piano and I touched a note,
I hit middle C.
Whatever that note would be.
You can feel the same note I feel.
Every person in the room,
I hit the note,
Duh.
Suddenly I feel the note.
Everybody feels the note.
Now,
The interesting thing is that we all feel the same note.
Why?
Because we all have the capacity to resonate at that sound.
I think the letter,
Note A is 440.
We all have the 440 in us,
That vibration,
Whatever that note may be.
So when it's played,
I feel,
Bah,
I feel that vibration.
Now,
Some people might like the note A,
Some might not.
And I might like it or I might not because of some relationship I've had in the past with that particular vibration,
Where something came and said I don't like that and then came up with reasons for it,
Instead of understanding that there is a certain natural response to anything that touches us.
So let's say that I hit three notes,
A chord,
A minor chord,
A major chord,
Something,
And I like that.
I don't like that again.
I wouldn't possibly be able to know the experience of that chord unless there was something in my consciousness that corresponds to it.
Now,
Whether I like or don't like is insignificant when it comes to our spiritual life,
Because like and not like,
All forms of preference are based on a conditioning,
Something we come into this world with perhaps by the nature of our essence,
That naturally attracted to or avoid certain things,
All meant to be transcended.
But nevertheless,
In that moment,
I experience directly that vibration.
If that is true,
And we know that it is,
We don't say to ourselves when we hear a note we don't like,
I don't say I hate that piano,
I don't resent the person who played that chord,
I understand.
It's just a note.
It's a chord.
It is some vibration that is awakening in me and revealing in this consciousness something,
A capacity that it has to resonate at that level,
That it is in that consciousness to be a perfect reflection of the note A.
Now let's imagine there's a note P that stands for pain.
Yes,
And it's not personal.
And somebody plays the note.
Now,
I don't know if you see this yet,
But somebody who's playing the note pain doesn't really know they are exuding,
That they are manifesting,
Radiating that pain.
And the reason we don't know that we're radiating,
Manifesting that pain,
Is because we're too busy thinking about who or what happened that made us feel that way,
So that all of our attention as a human being is all relegated to what the reaction is pointing to as the source of our suffering.
So I'm ignorant of the content of the possibility of my own consciousness,
That is infinite,
Because there's nothing that will ever appear in the consciousness that isn't already a possibility within it.
Its potential is to be and to express and reveal and ultimately transfer to the instrument,
You and I,
The awareness of its own endlessness,
Including its endless capacity to resonate with anything and everything,
Including pain,
But not the way we look at it,
Because we don't want to know this pain,
And because we don't want to know it,
Because we don't know what to do with it.
We have enemies.
We have those that we blame.
Please understand I am not making excuses for cruelty.
It's just that I cannot allow another human being's betrayal.
I cannot allow another human being's ignorance.
I cannot allow another human being's hatred,
Regardless how many ways they've been given to justify it.
I cannot allow that to become my character.
I cannot allow that to define me,
Let alone confine me to the reactions that follow it,
Because if I do,
What am I?
I'm a machine.
I'm a soul trapped inside of a consciousness that was intended to be part of the perfection of that soul once it was learned how to use it and understand it.
Imagine for a moment two climbers up in the Alps somewhere,
And as happens,
There's an avalanche of some kind,
A minor quake,
And all that rock and snow comes tumbling down.
They're able to find protection from it,
And when it passes,
They get ready to continue their climb,
And as they start up a little bit,
They come to a place that had been,
What do I do?
They come to a place that had been covered for maybe 100,
200 years,
And they're shocked because they're leaning on both sides of a rocky ledge,
One on each side.
There's a man.
He's frozen.
He's in a German uniform,
And he's got a gun,
And it's pointing to the other man frozen to the other rock in a Russian uniform,
And they're both sitting there holding a gun on each other,
Frozen in place.
It would be a staggering sight,
Wouldn't it?
It's a bit of an exaggeration,
But I'm trying to make a point,
And the two hikers may be men and women,
A man and a woman who are like yourself,
God willing,
Interested in understanding the meaning of things,
Not,
Oh,
What do you think happened here?
And they surmise that probably what happened is that they stumbled upon each other at a certain point there in the Alps,
And stumbling upon each other,
The first thing they did in the fear and pain that comes up that you could say is natural,
You could say that,
But would that pain and that fear be there without the conditioned consciousness that convinced them that this people and those people and all the rest of that,
Would all of that be,
There they are,
And neither one will be the first to put down the gun.
And God help us when our mind tells us,
Well,
Of course not,
Who wants to die?
I think a better question is,
Are we not dying as long as we live in fear?
What is our world,
What is our life like,
As long as pain becomes our guide and tells us who is our enemy,
So that we establish more and more justification for judging everyone and everything around us,
Is that how I want to live?
See,
This is why I am not a teacher.
I refuse to be called a teacher.
I don't want anything from anyone.
What I do want is to understand more and more deeply what it is I'm talking to you about,
And then if I am able to help others see that,
Because it's critical,
Not just to me,
To us.
Look at our world.
You can just see it.
One says,
I'll put down my gun if you put down your gun.
Well,
You put your gun down first.
No,
I'm not going to do that.
Isn't that exactly what happens when we have an enemy?
When our husband or wife,
When somebody confronts us,
Causes some kind of conflict?
Do we not immediately pull a gun,
Meaning psychologically speaking,
Are we not suddenly behind some defensive shield that must be offensive if we don't want to get hurt more?
So there we are,
Two human beings,
Each of us looking at the other as the offender,
Failing to see what it is that I'm probably failing to be able to express to you,
Failing to see that you're not the offender,
I'm not the offender,
But something offensive lives in this consciousness because it is forever trying to defend what it assumes is true about itself.
That would be something.
I'm going to run out of time.
I'll tell you a quick story.
I actually intended to start with this,
But.
Here's a man and he's in court.
We know what that's like.
And he's sitting there and he's been falsely accused.
And he's accused of something that it turns out that is,
How do I say,
That the judge has some experience with in the past personally.
So the judge,
By any stretch of the imagination,
Is not impartial.
And the judge,
Thinking that I'm a judge and capable of being impartial,
I can put aside my personal feelings in this case.
So the judge never brings up,
As would the prosecutor and defender looking for jurors,
To make sure that no one comes in with any kind of preference relative to this particular situation.
So we're sitting in the courtroom and our hero,
As you'll see,
Is sitting there and he can feel what the judge feels.
And not only can he feel what the judge feels,
But he's sitting there and he's angry as hell.
He knows that he's done nothing wrong,
That he has been accused unjustly.
And by the way,
Who accuses us of anything other than our own mind telling us that we ought to be other than we are or that others need to be different than they are?
Always accusation,
Accusation,
Accusation.
And where does accusation come from other than a part of us wishing that we could get rid of the pain by finally determining who's responsible for it.
You're accused.
He stood accused.
So he's sitting there and his resentment is palpable.
His resistance to the judge,
To the prosecutor.
You can imagine if you were in a case like that,
He's not sitting there a happy camper.
He's more and more full of judgment himself of those who are judging him.
Again,
You can call this natural.
I say it isn't natural at all.
I say it belongs to a level of consciousness that produces the conditions that we find ourselves in and that must change.
But let me get on with the story.
So he's sitting there and he's becoming more and more upset,
More and more pain in him,
If you can see it.
And as his pain mounts,
So does the perceived pain and probably the palpable pain in the judge because the judge can feel the man being judged.
He can feel the pain.
Of course he can.
I proved it to you.
So what happens when pain fights pain,
When pain resists pain?
What happens?
Does it not become exacerbated?
Yes,
It does.
And the more exacerbated it becomes,
The more everybody wants to bring an end to the condition and escape it or change it somehow so as to escape the condition that seems to cause the pain when the condition is not the cause of the pain at all.
The pain has produced the condition at all stages.
Finally,
The man,
You and I,
God willing,
Is sitting there and he reaches a certain pitch of pain.
And he realizes he's been there a thousand times before.
And in that same moment,
He looks over at the judge.
And instead of judging the judge who is judging him,
He feels the pain of the judge.
It's beyond a doubt.
One day if you are in an argument with somebody and you're finally tired of the pain of being in an argument,
You'll be willing to understand the pain in you that is propagating that problem.
The thing in you that won't let go,
That insists it wins,
That comes out on top,
That always has the last word.
You'll understand that that part of you has been killing you for as long as it has been active in your consciousness and that it is killing the world because it meets everyone and everything from that same consciousness.
And then he's sitting there and he turns to his attorney and he says,
I need a word with the judge.
The federal says,
You can't have a word with the judge.
This is all spiritual.
And our hero says,
I want one and I must have one.
And so without his attorney's approval,
He raises his hand.
Judge,
What is it?
I beg to have one word with you privately.
I'm prosecuting out of order.
The judge is also a man or woman asleep,
But wanting to understand allows the defendant to come to the bench.
The defendant comes up to judge.
I move for a mistrial.
On what grounds do you move for mistrial?
He says.
I know you're in pain.
Just like me.
Now,
That's fanciful in the world.
But imagine for a moment that the judge in that moment realized that she or he had been,
In fact,
Full of resentment,
Full of judgment because of their past and that it was affecting this trial.
And then imagine that that was a person of enough character to recuse themselves.
I'm trying to say in the only way I know how to say it,
That what would happen between you and I,
Between me and the clerk,
Who's rude,
Between myself and the person who cuts me off on the freeway or the political pundit on some news channel who can't wait to,
By the way,
Prove that their judgment of whoever the other offending party is,
Is the only one.
And that's why they need laws to make sure that that never happens and so forth and so on.
And nothing has changed for thousands of years.
What would happen if inwardly I recognized I'm talking with my wife and she's done something.
She's in pain.
I'm sitting with someone,
The volunteers in the foundation or someone who worked for the foundation.
What would happen if that moment,
Instead of judging them because there's pain that they didn't live up to my expectation or demand,
What would happen if that same moment I rest my case?
I rest my case.
I want my attention to be something on other than judging you and blaming you for my pain.
I want to know intimately this enemy that we share in common that runs this world because it is in charge of our consciousness,
A consciousness that has no understanding of itself,
But that we can understand.
There is the hope for compassion.
There is the hope for kindness.
There is the possibility of being the first one to lay down your life for the sake of another.
To do what is true because you know you cannot do anything more than that,
Not because you're a good person,
Not because you're a spiritual person,
Not because you're something that cut above the rest,
But because you're tired of being undercut by a relationship with an unconscious nature that always tells you the right thing to do is to hide the pain from yourself and find someone else to blame for it.
The original meaning of the word innocence is to be without blame.
To be without blame.
Take it as I've given it.
I hope you've heard something.
Join me if you can tomorrow.
I'll be here next Saturday.
Let's do our work as best we can do it.
Don't think to yourself you failed because you get angry or find yourself in pain again.
Don't let any part of you convince you of that at all.
Instead,
Understand as best you can that it's your right and your work as best you were able to do it in the moment to garner a little bit more understanding,
Bring a little bit more light into this consciousness so that at last this consciousness can be a light unto others instead of a punishment to them.
Bye.
