For those of you that are timely enough for the beginning of this chat,
I will tell you that first the material I will discuss today,
And I hope to leave time at the end of it for a bit of a dialogue with you.
I'm going to explore more deeply tomorrow on Sunday,
Where you are welcome to join me.
There is absolutely no barrier,
Completely free.
I speak three times a week.
Find out about it.
I'm not allowed to promote it on this website,
But you can find it if you want.
And the reason that I'm going to continue this discussion,
And actually it's a continuation of a series I've been giving,
Because it's impossible in one fell swoop to convey all that is possible for us to become conscious of.
And so we need,
If you will,
A kind of ceaseless immersion in what we will call new impressions,
Because without the new impressions,
As I will explain to you in this time we have,
We're as good as dead in the water.
So I think that we can get started.
Take a nice deep breath wherever you are.
Bring yourself back into your life,
Not into your thoughts,
Not into your feelings,
Not into your body,
But into all of that at once.
Fully present in the presence moment,
Which has to do with our talk title.
I'm going to ask Kate to bring up the key lesson.
If you would mind not posting for a second,
I want to read it and then get into our dialogue.
Here's the key lesson.
We can realize all that we are meant to see and to be accordingly only as we allow self-awareness to serve its highest purpose in life,
Which is what?
To reveal what is yet realized about our consciousness,
That it might be reconciled and reintegrated as part of a greater whole.
In other words,
We are given the capacity as human beings to be in a place where who and what we are is not just who and what we have been,
But from out of who and what we have been comes a new birth.
Comes someone in quotes,
And I use that word very carefully,
Comes a revelation and a realization that who and what we are is intended to be entirely new moment to moment,
Not a product of thought or image or belief or opinion or of hope,
But of a direct relationship that we are all intended to be in with what we are calling this presence moment.
The intersection of all that is possible and all that we have yet to understand meeting and you and I as a recipient of being in that place,
Kind of like suddenly realizing I've been standing in the shade or in the rain my whole life and always wishing that there was something that I could do so I could get rid of the chill of the conflict.
And then suddenly out of the corner of my eye,
Looking over and seeing,
Looking over and seeing,
Oh my God,
Look what there,
There's what I'm looking for.
There's,
There's light,
There's warmth.
And then doing what we have to do to move from who and what we have been,
Which is inseparable from where we are inwardly into that new place.
And it is a struggle because who and what we are have become dependent on not want,
Listen to this,
We have become dependent on not wanting to be who and where we are because out of that attachment and dependency,
That consciousness can then dream of what it needs to become and where it needs to go instead of the direct action of seeing for a fact where I am and what I am in that moment.
And then allowing that revelation to release me from that consciousness into where the sun is shining and waiting for us to enter into it.
All right,
Maybe too long of an introduction,
Quick question.
And I asked you to see it.
Why is it that everything seems to pass?
I don't know about you.
I'm looking at myself in this screen.
I'm going to be 75 years old in like 30 days.
And I don't look like I used to look.
This body is,
It's already bought a ticket away.
I'm gone.
It's going.
My body's passing.
The facilities that my body had when it was younger,
They're passing.
Everything is passing except for one thing.
Can you name it?
And don't say God,
Because you don't know anything about what you say you know about,
And I'll prove it to you.
The one thing that never seems to pass is my pain.
Even seemingly new conditions.
And I'm found,
I find myself thrust into an old pain,
A familiar pain.
So even though the conditions are new,
And we're ever always trying to find new conditions so that we can escape our pain,
What we find out is that the new conditions we hope to escape our pain within is actually a creation of our pain just merely concealing itself in yet another dream,
Another hope of becoming someone who one day is free.
You must get rid of the whole idea of one day.
You must see through it,
Which is what this talk is going to help you do.
So I better keep rocking.
We will never,
Ever understand this freedom from the pain of the past until we begin to suspect,
And hopefully more than that,
That we cannot see from our present level of consciousness that it is forever projecting itself into a time when it won't have the conflict it's experiencing,
But that it cannot see,
And we can eventually,
That the time it projects when it will become free of its pain is merely a reconfiguration of its past in some new idea or new image that that same consciousness creating that image then derives a sensation of,
Yes,
This is when I'll be free.
This is why it said you must know the truth,
And the truth will set you free.
Because,
And if you're willing,
I'm going to show you what is required of us is that we wake up,
But waking up is not lollipops and sunglasses or whatever that expression is.
Waking up is a dedicated,
Required entrance into,
Listen carefully,
A new kind of struggle,
A new kind of struggle that rather than being useless the way our struggles are now,
Because they are handed to us by a consciousness that doesn't know what to do with itself as it is other than try to get rid of itself,
But a new struggle in which we begin to,
If you will,
Suffer consciously our own consciousness.
Our own consciousness is responsible for our suffering.
It is complicit in its continuation,
And because of its complicity it cannot see how it is involved in the perpetuation of that pain in its own reincarnation,
Which is the real definition of reincarnation,
By the way.
Simply the reconfiguration and re-identification with what is merely another form of ourself projected from the past into the future where nothing can change because the past is what must be changed,
And the past doesn't exist apart from the consciousness that clings to it and revisits at every opportunity,
And listen to this,
It revisits the past in order to escape the past that it says is making it a victim.
It revisits the past in order to escape the past that it says is making it a victim.
Let me slow down and let me get into this.
This is just for those of you that are slightly bent in this way.
I'm going to tell you a real-life situation that you should be able to identify with that is the actual simplification of the three laws of thermodynamics.
You'll see,
You don't need to know the laws to understand what I'm about to describe.
So here's the apprentice angel,
And he's with the senior angel on another one of their adventures across the cosmos,
But the senior angel likes to visit planet earth most of all because planet earth is a unique place in the greater scheme of the cosmos in that we exist as a certain gap,
A certain relationship between the will of heaven and the will of earth,
Where we are required,
Without knowing it,
To participate in this reconciliation of kingdoms,
Of what is timeless heaven,
Call it what you will,
The divine,
And what is in time,
This body,
This consciousness as it is,
And that there is intended to be a relationship between the two so that in that relationship,
Not only we as human beings can change individually,
But because the consciousness is a single consciousness,
What I go through and agree to give up or understand has an impact on the entire consciousness so that through my work or your work,
As we will describe it,
We begin not to just experience some form of what we could call self-liberation.
You know,
I have to tell you something.
The idea of self-liberation is a kind of a tease and a lie because it implies that there is a self here that's going to be liberated.
The truth is there is no separate self to be liberated.
Who and what we are is created free and intended to enter into increasing degrees of understanding the nature of that gift.
So here's the story.
Let me get into it.
Apprentice angel,
Senior angel,
And they swoop down to,
I don't know,
They swoop down to a dinner party and everybody's having a grand old time,
Having some wine,
Some cocktails,
Toasting everybody.
It's a wonderful event.
And then someone sitting there,
You can see,
Not quite participating in the joy of it,
If you will,
The temporary joy,
Throws a passive aggressive comment in the midst of all of this to someone who,
The only one who would know that that passive aggressive comment was actually meant for him.
Now,
Senior angel and apprentice angel represent levels of consciousness.
And there are levels of consciousness,
I am telling you as a fact,
That we are not privileged yet to partake and participate in where what used to be something that would just be like that to us,
Where things would go flying by,
We don't understand what's going on,
In a higher level of consciousness,
Which is a quickened consciousness,
Using those words,
Because it is involved in a higher vibration,
Everything that passes into it moves slower than it does,
It can see everything,
Almost in slow motion.
This will eventually help you understand how you will begin this proper struggle with yourself,
Because you'll be able to see yourself instead of participating in its plots and plans.
So they're sitting there and the apprentice angel can see a little bit when this man hears this comment,
Suddenly he looks like he's had a little shock.
The apprentice angel can see he's trying,
The man's trying not to show the shock,
You understand that,
But he can see the face kind of blanching and the spirit sinking,
Even though the man's still sitting there with a grin on his face.
And he says to the senior angel,
What are we looking at?
What's the lesson here?
Now,
The senior angel has powers,
The apprentice angel doesn't,
Meaning there are parts of us that are already fully awake,
Functional,
And that from time to time,
We can have an impression.
And that's what the senior angel does.
He says,
All right,
Let's go back and see it again.
And so they go back and the whole moment is played out again in slower motion than before.
And this time,
The apprentice angel is looking at the man as everything else is moving in what we would call real time,
But in what is timeless,
The whole thing is laid out like a picture.
He can see that as soon as the man got shocked and no one else can see this,
The man reaches over and pulls out of his knapsack,
A photo album,
And the man flipping through this photo album.
Now the apprentice angel is watching this.
Nobody at the table knows this is going on.
And even the man that is doing it doesn't know what's going on.
It's taking place in an invisible,
A realm that is still concealed in this consciousness.
And the apprentice angel says,
What is he doing?
What has that got to do with what's going on?
Senior angel says,
Just hold your,
Slow your roll.
Hold on.
Just watch.
Everything will be explained.
And it will,
By the way.
So here's the man and he opens the photo album.
And then shocking as it is to the apprentice angel from within that big photo album,
The man reaches inside.
It seems impossible to the normal thinking,
But the man reaches inside that photo album and pulls out a slightly smaller photo album.
And then begins to flip through those pages,
Looking at these pictures.
And as he's looking at the pictures again,
In fast motion,
No in,
In so-called real time,
No one sees it,
But apprentice angel can see this man is beginning to take on the persona of someone who is in deeper pain,
More shocked.
And he looks again and says to the senior angel,
What's going on?
And sure as heck that there's another album inside of that album and another album and another album.
You've seen these nesting dolls where we're going to call these painful albums.
And the senior angel says,
Do you understand?
And the apprentice angel,
I think I do.
Because if I'm understanding right with each new photo album that he pulls out,
There's greater and greater detail that supports his reaction to what this person said.
So essentially,
As he's flipping through these various pictures,
These memories that have all been gathered into a realm of unconsciousness and its associations,
He has further proof why he has to feel the way he does.
And further,
Not only more proof of why he needs to be in pain and resent or,
Or hate that person who made the comment.
But as he puts the whole story together,
Or more accurately,
As he goes through these various images,
The story is put together for him so that he thinks he sees very clearly the understanding of the moment,
Why the person said what they did.
And further,
Now having the whole story eminently clear to him as explained to him by the associations connected to all of these old past images and experiences,
He knows what he has to do to go beyond the suffering that he's in.
So try to understand this,
What the apprentice angel is seeing,
And what I hope you're seeing,
Is that this man,
Without knowing it,
Agrees to revisit and embrace the times in his past where this painful memory and its sense of self not only still lives,
But it's being kept alive and reincarnated every time that man goes back and starts to relive the experience that he blames on the present moment.
He doesn't know he is reliving the past because the sensation is present and painful,
And it gives him some possibilities in a time to come when he'll finally shake off the whole mess.
Apprentice angel looks to the senior angel.
Is that it?
Senior angel says,
I think you're starting to understand.
That's exactly what's going on.
This man,
Without knowing it,
Somehow has come to believe,
As has the whole of the human consciousness,
That his struggle to escape the pain that he's in involves revisiting it so that from it he can find the path to freedom.
And there is no path to freedom in the past.
The past is a circle.
The past is literally a line of time that extended out entirely circles back on itself.
And that explains why it is that I ask the question,
Why is it that with everything that passes and it does,
Does my pain not pass?
Rather,
In truth,
It becomes more important to me.
It becomes more pressing,
More compelling.
And the reason it becomes that is because all of the effort put into it has proven fruitless.
All of the ways in which I've tried to find excuses,
Justify,
Or blame others for it has been absolutely useless as has been all of the suffering that I have gone through and continue to go through because I don't understand myself.
Let me keep going.
Transition.
It is impossible for us presently to struggle in a real way to produce a real change until we have a new order of self-understanding.
And that new self-understanding is that our struggle,
A,
Has to be conscious.
But a conscious struggle is to understand our present struggle.
It is to see that our present struggle is always involving,
Should I or should I not?
Do I or do I not?
Is this or that the solution to my suffering?
So that our struggle by its nature involves a confused mind looking for a way to clarify the content of itself by looking to the opposites that it produces and then deciding based on whatever the conclusion is derived from our past experience,
This is what I should do.
No,
That's what I ought not do.
So we are always,
One way or another,
Trying to struggle with some way in which we are going to change our conditions through a struggle with them when the real struggle is not what should I do about this moment,
But who should I be right now?
That's the struggle,
Who to be.
And in order to struggle with who to be,
We have to first see that who we are in every one of these painful moments is something that is handed to us.
We are told by our pain that the reason we have it is for this,
That he did that and this is why I'm suffering.
We are told by our own summary resistance and reaction to that moment,
The cause of that resistance and reaction and the cause of that resistance and reaction never includes an understanding that if I'm ever going to be free of this conflict,
I'm going to have to be free of the consciousness responsible for it.
We must understand that there is a completely different,
Altogether different,
I'm using this word carefully because it's loaded with implications that aren't altogether right,
There is a completely different choice to be made in the moment when this pain takes us over.
And the first choice is really to see in that moment that I have been thrust into a I've been thrust into a place where I'm suddenly in pain and in this place where I'm in pain,
I must do something in order to end it.
And everything that I'm told to do to end it,
To justify,
To blame,
To hate myself,
To worry,
To be afraid,
Everything that I'm told to do to bring an end to that pain is given to me by that painful nature.
And I don't suspect it,
I don't see it at all,
Because I'm instantly identified with the promise in the temptation to free myself through what it says I must do.
So the,
Oh,
I hope you understand.
So the first choice,
The real choice,
And you don't just come upon it.
The first choice is to realize,
You know what,
As long as I'm sitting here resisting this moment,
As long as I'm sitting here trying to figure out how to escape it or change it or blame or hate,
As long as I'm sitting here,
I have no choice.
In my unawareness,
I am,
In fact,
Choiceless.
And the new choice is to recognize that,
To see,
You know what,
How many times have I felt helpless?
How many times have I felt waves of grief or anger or resentment or regret come washing away,
To wash me away,
Then all I know to do is to lay down or then try to fight with it.
So that the new struggle is born of a new understanding that when these moments come,
Our present nature only knows yes,
No.
Yes,
This is what I'm going to do about that.
No,
I can't do anything about it.
No,
I don't want to deal with it.
Our present consciousness meets every moment that essentially threatens the continuity of its identity with yes or no.
That's it.
You have to see it.
Yes,
I'm going to get in there and really mix it up.
I'm not going to let people talk to me like that.
No,
How many times do I have to go through this?
I might as well give up.
Yes and no.
And that consciousness that only has yes and no in it is limited to that consciousness that proffers,
That offers only a solution in time.
Because every solution that that consciousness offers is yes,
I'm going to do this in order to become that,
Be free.
Or no,
I'm not going to have anything to do with this.
And by avoiding that,
I'll be free.
And then some strange admixture of those things,
As we've all seen,
It doesn't matter,
Yes or no,
We'll be in conflict as soon as we arrive at whatever decision we've made,
Because it isn't us who made the decision.
It was made for us without us knowing it.
Because that conflict keeps the sense of self so present and so ever painful,
We're always struggling.
So what are those moments offering?
If I see beyond the shadow of doubt,
That there is no choice.
Again,
You have to see this.
How many times have you met a moment that was painful,
And you said,
You're still experiencing the same pain.
I'm going to make a million dollars,
I'm going to get a six pack set of abs,
I'm going to get my face fixed.
I'm going to go live someplace else,
I'm going to find a new teaching.
I'm going to meditate more,
Not only worthless,
But worse than worthless,
Because it cements the idea of a self that's going to escape itself through the projection of itself into a time to come.
So that yes,
Is actually a big no,
It goes nowhere.
And no equally the same,
Because no is just born out of summary resistance.
And then the belief that condition somehow or other is superior to my ability to understand it,
And it's not.
The solution begins with recognizing that everything the mind does to free itself from the pain in itself,
Ensures the pain will go on.
Because the self that is experiencing that pain is not who you are.
It's not even who you were.
It's just a series of events,
An intersection of various conditions,
Out of which were created a certain persona,
A certain kind of pain based and identifying with it.
And then the persona and the pain beginning to establish an identity then clings to itself,
Clings to itself,
Because that's the only way it knows itself.
So we mustn't,
How do I say,
We understand that the new struggle has to be the realization that right now,
I absolutely can see beyond the shadow of a doubt.
I have been in this pain 1000 years.
I've had different reasons for it.
Same pain.
I've had this anger for 1000 years.
And I've done so many different things that by the way,
I regret.
And we always regret the actions that didn't work.
So I live with regret,
And yet turn to that very consciousness in order to help me transcend the very regret it has created.
So the struggle of should I or should I not needs to come to an end.
This is what I meant by it isn't the struggle of should I or should I not?
Because all of should I or should I not is all the idea of who I will be when I'm free.
That's what should I,
Should I not?
Who will I become when at last I carry out or escape this pain?
That I that creates those opposites,
The eye that is identified with them needs to be seen as a lie.
And if I see that clearly,
Then in that awareness of the uselessness of that suffering and that struggle,
As difficult as it may be,
In the recognition of that useless struggle and suffering is the beginning of a useful struggle and useful,
Useful,
Useful struggle and useful suffering.
Because the useful stuff suffering is me recognizing I have to die to the useless one.
There's no point in going on with it.
I've had the impression 100,
000 times,
But it's so overwhelming in its temptation and the temptation is always the identification.
Temptation and identification are synonymous.
You won't have to ask,
What do I do when you see who you are?
When you see the truth of yourself,
Meaning the full awareness,
Which will include not just the condition producing the reaction,
But it will include the consciousness involved in the replication of that reaction and the duplication of that identity.
And it'll all be there in slow motion.
You'll see yourself,
You'll see yourself get out the photo album.
You'll see yourself looking through it to try to figure out what happened and what do I do?
And then as you start thinking about what happened,
More of these images,
These associations from the dead past will flood in seemingly to bring you a new life because they're full of promise of a time to come when you won't suffer from the very images that you're now looking to find yourself through.
I've been speaking over and over again for the last few weeks about this idea.
Let it end.
Let it go.
Let it end and let it go is the same as understanding.
Let this moment be what it is so that I can see in what it is the whole of myself.
Then I am in the presence moment.
We must,
And we are not,
How do I say this?
We're not yet wired up.
The energies are too scattered.
But as all of this understanding begins to coalesce,
You begin to realize that it isn't really being brought together in some new form.
What you're realizing is that this consciousness is already a complete consciousness,
Meaning that it is already able to perfectly reflect and realize what it is that's being revealed in it,
But that we're outside of it.
And so because we're outside of it,
We don't understand the action is inherent in the awareness.
You know,
If you pick up a skill and it's hot,
You drop it.
Then why in the name of God,
When I pick up something from the past,
Do I not realize this thing is killing me?
Because the pain in picking it up starts to tell me,
Here's how you get back to pleasure.
Here's how you get back to peace.
So the task is to recognize.
And again,
I'm going to go into this tomorrow.
I do believe there is a place from out of which yes and no appear that allows for both,
But without being identified with either one,
Because yes and no belong to a consciousness trying to escape itself.
And the awareness of that consciousness is timeless.
And in that timeless awareness,
The choice is made for you,
Because you understand in that timeless awareness,
You're participating in something much bigger,
Much greater,
Much broader than what you would call your individual experience.
What a crock.
It's transcending what we call our individuality that brings us into what is a true undivided self.
And an undivided nature doesn't have to choose what to do when it sees the whole of itself being revealed,
Because it is released from itself in that same moment,
When it understands everything that has come to pass is required so that that revelation may release it into the next birth of itself.
I better stop.
37,
38 minutes.
I do want to have a little time to interact with you.
If you want to send along a comment or a question,
I always try to leave a little time.
There's a lot more time on Wednesdays and Sundays,
If you ever care to join me on those days when I speak.
I usually have a full half hour,
Even more for engagement,
If you're interested.
So let me,
Let me grab that,
Leah.
So when family and friends sit around and talk about the good times,
That can also be a way to escape the painful.
Of course it is.
Look,
There's nothing,
There's nothing wrong with having a good time.
I'm here visiting my daughter,
Getting to know my grandson better.
He's a trip.
That's pleasurable.
But if I think that I have to be approved of by my daughter or my grandson,
Or that they have to be a certain way in order for me to enjoy this trip,
The trip was ruined before I started it.
We're here to,
To enter into a moment that is renewing itself.
And we ourself is an element of that renewal,
Not the totality of it.
Can you give an example,
Please?
Gosh,
And I've been giving it.
And the next time you find yourself falling into a negative state,
Instead of just resisting or running from,
Or hoping to escape it,
Look and see what it is you are actually falling into.
The negative state tells you that you have been pushed into a situation or pulled into one that is against your will.
But if you look closely,
And what you are doing is just falling into an falling into her past that knows why the pain is there and what needs to be done about it.
We are not meant to fall into this pain.
We are meant to rise above it and understand the consciousness is responsible for it.
And in the realization of that responsibility,
We are released by a new action that has nothing to do with the continuity of who and what we've been.
This timeless place is the crucible.
I'm going to talk about that tomorrow,
John.
Pick up your cross and follow me.
There is a place between the passage of time,
This horizontal line,
And the sudden awareness of who and what we have been unconsciously in this natural line,
What we'd call natural life,
And the supernal reveals how unnatural to the Christ within,
To the truth within us,
How unnatural,
How wrong it is in one respect to be identified and participate,
Not just in punishing ourselves,
But everyone around us because of our demands.
What do I say when the disturbance appears?
You don't say anything,
Nellie.
That's the problem.
So here,
Anne,
Nellie,
Here's an exercise.
Stop talking to yourself.
Zip the lip.
Make it an exercise that the next time you start to feel some kind of pain,
Regret,
Worry,
That your one intention is to not talk to yourself about it.
That's all.
You don't have to have one more intention than that.
That seed will send you all the way to a new understanding of yourself.
Stop talking to yourself.
And you know what you'll see,
Anne?
You can't stop talking to yourself.
So that's going to create what?
Well,
Wait a minute.
If I intend not to talk to myself about this because I realize it leads nowhere,
And yet I can't stop talking to myself about it,
Who in the name of God is talking to me?
And who is it talking to?
Now you have the proper struggle because you realize either side of that equation leads nowhere.
Only someplace above that struggle that can see it has any hope of any real transformation.
Zip of the lip.
Yeah.
Guy,
Do you describe what occurs in a near-death experience during the life review process?
Guy,
You describe what occurs in a near-death experience during the life review process.
That level of conscious insight can be seen now in each moment while still inhabiting the body.
Die before you die.
Yes.
Die before you die.
I have a talk title in mind and maybe a book.
Who knows?
I'm kind of running out of time for it.
The title,
It'd be another book that wouldn't sell anything.
It would be entitled Living to Die.
The Great Adventure Continues.
I'll touch on this tomorrow,
But you know why we're so afraid of death?
Because our lives are so immersed in this miserable little world with its miserable little promises of a time to come when we will know peace and freedom.
And this miserable world exists as it does,
And only as it does,
Because humanity continues to believe that it can come to an end.
And if I can come to an end,
If my life's going to come to an end here,
I better do something to make sure it stays intact.
I must ensure its continuity at all costs.
And that's called ambition,
That's called conflict,
And that's called destruction.
Everybody,
Do your work.
I spelled it out as best I can.
We'll go into it more deeply tomorrow.
Be safe.
