Receive Perfect Direction From The Divine GF Live 11-02-24

So I'd ask a question just to set the stage,

Make sure we're all on the same page,

And it kind of lines up with something that St.

Paul said a long time ago,

Never intended to be necessarily a religious,

In quotes,

Idea.

It was an intuitive,

Interior question.

More or less,

He said that I don't do the good I would,

But the evil I would not,

Meaning most of the time I find myself regretting the actions that I've taken and not knowing prior to taking those actions that I've done so.

Do you understand the following?

Do you get the gist of that?

How many of you find yourself with your foot in your mouth or having hurt yourself or someone else without ever knowing that you were about to do that?

It's that simple,

And it's that important to ask ourselves these questions.

The funny thing is that we never really,

As a rule,

Other than judging ourselves,

Which is useless,

We never really stop to wonder,

Well,

How did that happen?

How could I act so completely against myself,

Let alone others in my life?

How can I be so distracted as to just launch into whatever it is that I said or did or plan and never know that I have sown the seeds of my own defeat even before I started?

It's such an important question.

And part of that question means,

And how do I continue to explain to myself as I do,

How it is that I acted against myself while believing that I was acting in favor of myself?

These are the things that generally set a person along the path to wanting to have self-knowledge.

So this is what we're going to look at.

The title of our material is How to Ask for and Receive Divine Direction from the Divine.

The furthest thing,

As we have just attested,

That we don't receive direction from the divine when we find ourselves hurting ourselves or others.

So let's get into it.

Here in Southern Oregon,

I'm sure wherever you are on the northern half of the hemisphere,

You know that we have started our,

In this instance,

Rather precipitous journey into winter.

It just comes on.

And part of winter is this month leading up to it where all of the leaves start to turn.

There's nothing quite like it back east,

But even here on the West Coast,

Although there's no light to speak of this morning to reveal the beauty,

The color.

I want to make sure,

Are you still able to hear me?

I just got a text message.

Ah,

Everything's good.

Great.

So I'd ask this question because it often comes to me.

Every year you watch and you see these leaves falling.

How does that leaf know that it's time to fall?

Or does the leaf know anything?

And is it the tree that decides to cut off the life force from the leaf?

And is it really the tree that makes that decision?

Or is that decision inseparable from the whole movement of the planet itself as it tilts on its axis,

Changing the relationship it has to the energy of the sun?

And is it really the sun that makes that decision when that planet moves to produce the axis that changes the seasons?

In the spring,

Which we also love,

The first daffodils,

How does a daffodil know to come through,

Pop its little yellow head out of the ground?

Or right now here in Southern Oregon,

I would call it the wild has started.

All of my friends,

The deer on this property,

All of the girls and their fawns,

Everybody's running around helter skelter because all of the bucks have grown their great antlers,

Shed the felt and the game is on.

The mating season has started and it literally possesses all of the creatures.

The girls pretend like they're not interested and yet they will always stop and make sure the buck knows they're there and gives them something extra to attempt them with.

So it's all going on all the time in this tremendous unseen field of not just intelligence,

But an awareness that unites somehow without our being able to see it,

All of these creatures in a tremendous field where nothing in that field is disconnected from anything else.

And how each and every last one of these creatures at every level seems to take their direction from,

For lack of a better word,

Mother Earth.

And that Mother Earth herself is guided and directed by another greater field that encompasses her life.

And if you can see this as above,

So below,

Level and scale within level and scale,

We can start to understand that there is this beautiful intelligence that without chaos,

Directs the content and actions of all of these creatures.

And what's really extraordinary,

I think anyway,

Is isn't it a paradox that the higher up the scale of in so-called intelligence,

Meaning from whatever it might be where we first recognize creatures start to,

That the higher up the scale of being,

The more likely the chaos.

Chimpanzees have war.

Dolphins have wars.

Why is it that the higher up the scale,

The more likely there is to be war and some kind of conflict,

When down the scale,

There's less and less of that conflict?

And I ask this because it's something that most of us never stop to consider that somehow or other,

Instead of things becoming more intelligent,

Connected and wise,

As they should be,

When creatures like ourselves have more than just an instinctual nature,

More than just an emotional nature,

But have an intellect capable of recognizing that relationship between the two.

Why isn't there more unity?

Because there's not.

And if we're willing to see that there's not,

That it's going in the opposite direction,

Then we can begin to ask ourselves a question.

How can there ever be peace on this earth?

And is this earth ever more perturbed,

Never been more perturbed than it is right now,

Ever?

Then how can things change unless,

Instead of seeing the mote in the eye of everyone else,

Of every other situation and circumstance,

How come instead of seeing that,

We don't see the beam in our own eye by which we're always bopping ourselves,

Others,

And everyone else that doesn't agree with our particular view of life?

This is what I want to understand.

How are we going to change?

Because it should be very clear to us at this point that all of the laws and the so-called morality,

All of the lines of so-called justice,

All of this is out the window and increasingly corrupted.

Not bringing about the unity,

But bringing about a disunity while each side,

Whatever the side is,

Claiming to know the path to freedom only sows more and more distrust and unease into the world.

This is what I'm asking.

So let's bring up the first key lesson to set the stage.

I have a lot to present.

Read along with me,

Please.

Once we learn what it means to see the truth of ourselves,

To accept each revelation as the herald of the healing it brings,

Then we will not only understand what it means to accept each moment as it is given,

But we will also learn to be grateful for what that moment has come to teach us about ourselves,

What each moment has come to reveal to us about what presently is hidden within us.

This is the task before us at all times,

But the topic that I want to look at with you together this morning.

Transition.

Nice deep breath.

Come back into your body.

Be present to everything that is being given to you through the relationship you have with me,

With your room,

With whatever it is that's going on around you at this moment.

And I ask this question,

What is,

Who is your guide in any given particular moment,

Especially unwanted ones?

What is your guide?

Do you know that you have,

That you are always in relationship with a certain form of guidance that regardless of how extraordinary we are in being able to explain these reactions that we have,

When failing to see that the reaction that appears within us,

Whatever the moment may bring to us,

That that reaction is where we look to to provide guidance for us.

Is our reaction part of a deep and timeless intelligent awareness that connects all things?

Or is the guide inherent in our mechanical reactions itself cut off from intelligence,

Even though it seems to,

Even though it tells us that these reactions are very wise in the moment,

We're quite sure of it.

So is our,

Is our guidance in the moment by the intelligent field of this awareness that we can see exists,

Or is the main source of our guidance in the moment,

What I would call guidance by analysis,

Guidance by analysis,

A divisive,

If not conflicted set of thoughts and feelings,

A chain of them quite literally,

That we trust to explain to us our reactions.

I'm hoping you're listening.

Do,

Am I guided moment to moment as,

As,

As an intelligent member of a broader field of awareness that cannot act against itself,

Let alone against anything else?

Or am I guided by a constant state of analysis,

Of thinking,

Of looking to a chain of thoughts that are quite familiar and assume because of my familiarity and my tendency for instantaneous identification with these thoughts,

Or am I assuming that their interpretation of the moment is a light by which I can see not only what's taking place in that moment,

But follow those thoughts and those reactions,

Trusting them as I've always done to give me the guidance I need to get through that moment.

That's the question.

Which is it?

Is it guidance by analysis,

Meaning guidance by a series of conditioned thoughts that are connected to these habitual reactions,

Or is it guidance by being in relationship with something that cannot misguide me,

But are constantly trying to give me a new way to understand,

Not just myself,

But my relationship to everyone and anything in the moment that I'm sharing?

I'm posing the question.

If nothing else,

Let me know that you're up to date with me,

You're following what I'm leading to,

Please.

So the majority of you are agreeing that this is true,

That our guidance is by analysis,

Taking thought,

What man taking thought can add one cubit to his stature,

Take no thought for the morrow,

All the teachings East and West point to this.

And yet,

If we're honest,

There's no moment in which something doesn't happen,

Something presses in on me,

There's a time deadline,

There's this,

That,

And all I know is to be in relationship with the guidance system,

In quotes,

That not only goes off the rails constantly and taking all involved in a crash,

But that then explains to me why it is that that guidance wasn't quite right.

But here's the update,

The data refresh,

To bring about this change that after having judged myself,

Meaning listen to my own thoughts that told me to go do or say this,

That then say,

Well,

That wasn't right,

You should have done this.

And then I believe that that intelligence in quotes,

Actually knows what happened.

And I trusted as fully as I did the last time that it misled me.

Are you following this?

What do we know about this relationship with what directs our life?

And the truth is,

We know nothing other than what it directs us to think about its misdirection,

That tomorrow there will always be a brighter light by which to see how and how and where to conduct ourselves to bring about this peace that that same consciousness keeps pointing to downstream.

And the truth is,

We know nothing about these reactions.

And the reason we know nothing about our own reactions,

Let alone our relationship to how we look to them to guide us.

All we know is what they tell us every time they appear,

Pop up as it were,

And then provide what always proves to be incomplete at best instructions,

Let alone directions,

How to have a more peaceful,

Contented,

Loving life.

So let's look at this together.

Now,

Take a deep breath.

Some of this may be a little bit hard to get at first.

But if you listen,

Without trying to think through what I'm saying,

Rather listen by seeing whether or not what I'm showing you is true,

You will at least catch a drift of what it is that we're looking to understand.

All reactions are a result of a pair of forces,

Something that is active,

And something that is passive,

A pair of forces that are brought together so that those forces form an intersection,

Active and passive,

Something timeless,

Invisible,

Acting upon what is passive and latent,

Waiting to be touched as dew leaves the sunlight or the fields the first rains,

Waiting where what is unknowable,

Meaning that which is always being made new,

The will of heaven,

Where something unknowable interacts with what is known,

The present moment,

Which is the presence of the divine,

Of celestial life,

Acts upon the past,

What is already conditioned inherently,

By the fact that it's a creation.

We don't understand a lot of this,

That by the fact that we are a creation,

We are conditioned to the extent that we are in a body that is formed,

And that that formation is always being asked to change,

To be transformed,

But by the fact that it is formed,

It resists anything that wants to change its form.

That's the nature of what is present and past as they interact,

Something timeless,

Inherently celestial,

Unconditioned,

As it acts on this consciousness,

And all that is inherent in it.

Now I know that's a lot to understand.

I trust that you're listening.

Do you agree that the past,

Present,

And future all occur at the same time?

Reedy,

Look,

We can agree till the cows come home about time,

And the relationship,

And physics,

And we can till the cows come home.

One day,

We all have to recognize that we find consolation that we find consolation in ideas that do nothing to change us from the inside out,

That the analysis,

The consideration of what may be a great and beautiful truth,

Does nothing to bring forward in us the light that lets us act truthfully in the moment,

Because until we're aware of the inside and the outside of what is timeless,

And what is in time at the same time,

Nothing can change.

Let me bring up the second key lesson.

If you're ready,

Leah,

Read it with me.

Reactions aren't directions,

Let alone instructions on how to find whatever it is they seem to point to.

Reactions aren't directions,

Let alone how to find whatever it is they point to in order to what?

I have a reaction,

You make me angry.

The reaction points to you as the source of my suffering.

The reaction then provides directions how to change that relationship by punishing or pleasing you,

So that I'm always,

Without knowing it,

In the hands of a stream of thought,

Of associated conditioned responses to that reaction,

Telling me,

Here,

Look guy,

Look what happened,

Look at this world,

Oh it's a terrible place,

And it may be,

Meaning only because human beings are trying to direct life on earth,

But not only does it see that,

But then it finds something that it needs to do,

That it sees itself as being separate from,

In order to bring about the peace that it imagines.

Reactions aren't directions.

If you got nothing else out of this talk,

Then to realize that when you have a reaction,

It's pointing to the cause of itself,

And as it points to the cause of itself,

It's telling you what to do to change the suffering,

The disturbance that that reaction points to.

Reactions in and of themselves have no intelligence other than serving to reveal the thing that has acted and the thing it is being acted on.

I want to repeat this.

Reactions in and of themselves have no intelligence other than,

For instance,

In the nature to provide the moving center in that deer or that dog.

It's the reaction,

And it creates a situational awareness.

A reaction in an unconscious creature creates a situational awareness that informs the creature,

Not only the direction that the reaction is pointing to,

But how to keep itself safe from what that nature intuits is a danger to it.

This is important to understand.

Unconscious reactions create a kind of situational awareness that is fine at the level of you animals,

But when it comes to human beings,

If it's just a situational awareness,

And it's always a divisive awareness,

Meaning it's always me and them,

You and I,

And never an integrated relationship that should exist between conscious creatures,

Then we have to ask ourselves this question.

How can the nature of any of these reactions,

Especially as we are in relationship to them now,

How can any of these reactions serve to change the past from out of which that reaction is coming?

All reactions are a part of a conditioned nature that responds to what is unconditioned acting on it,

So that this human consciousness,

Completely conditioned as it is,

But not intended to be so,

It has its place.

I need to know when I see a red light on the street to have a conditioned reaction to it.

I don't think to myself,

Oh,

Red light better stop.

I have learned over time and been conditioned by my culture to understand red means stop,

But if all of that's true and these reactions and their conditioning are already predetermined,

Then how would we ever learn what it means to have any real choice at all?

If my choices are made for me by my reactions,

And they are,

Meaning the reaction produces a kind of conflict that as it appears tells me what I have to do to change the circumstance,

Yes,

Doesn't the reaction say,

Oh,

Look,

Here's what happened,

Here's what you need to do.

That's inherent in every reaction,

So that my guidance comes from fear.

A reaction comes,

I think there's a threat,

I can only respond to that threat by seeing the source of that fear,

And then that nature tells me where the fear is and what to do to be free,

When what we're looking at,

If we're seeing it together,

Is that that reaction doesn't know anything about freedom.

That reaction has nothing but what we would call a natural intelligence that is corrupted by an unnatural relationship that we have to our own reactions,

To where that reaction becomes our intelligence,

Our guide,

Literally our god,

So that I am directed by what seems to me a powerful force that can perceive everything that needs to be seen in that moment,

When I am identified with the reaction and the choices it's making,

I'm essentially blind.

And if that's true,

Then how in the name of God are we ever going to go about the business of changing ourselves,

When these reactions are doing what?

These reactions are telling us who and what needs to be changed outside of us,

Or how terrible we are,

And how we need to resist and refuse our own reactions.

How many of you know people that what they believe is authority or command over themselves is to be so locked tight,

Their faces so squinched together,

Trying to make sure that no reaction is revealed that would seem to reveal that person as being out of control.

And the more these reactions try to control themselves,

The more stress is produced,

The more stress,

The more anger,

Frustration,

And you can see where that loop goes round and round and round.

So can our reactions tell us what we need to do to be free?

Can a reaction ever tell me what I need to do to change,

If the reaction is a relationship between something that a kind of light that doesn't know itself properly,

Touching something that knows nothing about itself?

So that in the relationship between what is celestial and earthly,

The will of heaven and the will of earth,

When those two things come together,

How can I begin to use those moments where this reaction comes up,

And instead of being ruled by it,

And relegated to the direction it says to take,

Instead I realize that I am in the throes of this reaction,

And that it is trying to teach me,

Show me something about myself,

If I could only be present long enough to the marriage of that union.

Why?

This is somewhat deep.

The awareness of a reaction is latent in the opposites that create it.

The awareness of a reaction is latent in the opposites that serve to create it,

Meaning that when at last something comes and something receives it,

In that moment of that reaction,

There is an awareness of not only what has touched me,

But there is also an awareness of having been touched.

Ordinarily,

All I know is something touched me that in quotes I don't like.

I'm not aware of what it is in me that doesn't like it,

Just the resistance to it,

So that the reaction of resistance then says,

Oh look,

Here's what you need to do,

Here's the instruction to get rid of that problem.

Or conversely,

I'm suddenly seized by a reaction I didn't even know was coming,

And then that nature,

Being disturbed,

Has to find something outside of itself to prove to itself why that pain needs to become changed by whatever process it takes.

So we literally look where our reactions point to,

And we literally fail in that moment to see that as long as we are looking to reactions for some form of intelligent guidance,

We are without guidance and blinded by the fact that our identification with these reactions and all of their associated thoughts have never done one thing to change us.

It's just kicking the psychological can,

Kicking the hope of conscience down the road.

Now,

If what I've said is true,

And you have to see it for yourself,

I cannot prove this to you,

It's a fool's errand to try to prove anything to any other human being.

We either want to understand or we don't,

That when you go outside,

For instance,

The light is lifting a little bit,

The fog is lifting,

And suddenly I'm beginning to see all the colors on the trees.

The experience of the color on the trees,

Of the leaves,

Can't be separated from the parts of myself that are receiving those vibrations.

So there's a relationship now that what seems to be reflected and what it is reflecting in are no longer separate.

That's what beauty is.

In that moment,

The reaction,

If you want,

Isn't just what I see and not just what is seeing it.

The reaction is something that illuminates the relationship between the observer and the observed,

Showing them as a unity.

The awareness is inherent in every reaction.

At the simplest level,

Even an amoeba has a reaction to light.

The reaction to the light guides the amoeba via natural processes that allow it to go to or from what stimulates it.

You and I have something higher than that,

God willing,

Where what we need to see is not just what is seemingly outside of us,

But what it is within us that is experiencing that revelation.

This is an important idea.

The awareness of a reaction is inherent in the opposites that serve to create it,

And that awareness unites the two seemingly divisive parts.

The awareness proves they are not separate.

This is the idea that Christ spoke of when he said,

He maketh the sun to shine on good and evil alike.

He maketh the sun to shine on good and evil alike,

Meaning that this intelligence,

This awareness,

This celestial presence,

When it is there and what is acting and what is being acted on is in its light.

In that moment,

These things are no longer separate.

They're no longer apart the way this present level of consciousness perceives them and then takes from its perception the prescription.

Well,

Here's what you need to do about this pain.

Here's how to get more pleasure.

What we have to understand is the following,

And you might want to write it down.

No reaction does a self make.

No reaction does a self make unless some conditioned aspect of our self responds in such a way that it identifies with wanting or not wanting that moment,

And now there's a self.

But that sense of self did not exist prior to the moment that brought up this reaction,

And in that reaction,

This explanation that says this reaction is separate from you,

Guy.

You wouldn't be having this reaction if it weren't for what was taking place outside of you,

And that's not true.

The reaction is a relationship between what is passive and active,

Between what is timeless and what is in time,

And there is no way that we would ever know that relationship between what seems to be disparate forces unless there was something divine there in that moment helping us to see these things are not disconnected at all.

So that instead of that reaction becoming an eye-making machine,

Which it does,

Doesn't it?

Doesn't every reaction produce on the spot another sense of self that in turn has another reaction?

So it's like an evil donut machine kicking out all of these seeming identities,

Each and every one,

Because it is in fact disconnected from life,

Then interacting and trying to find a way to continue itself.

This eye-making machinery makes copies of itself,

Endless iterations,

And none of these eyes,

These identities,

Not one of them has the power to change themselves,

Let alone change the conditions that they are blaming for having brought them into Suddenly I'm here,

I don't want to be here.

We never question anything.

How can I be sitting in my own home,

Maybe having my coffee or reading a book or looking out at nature or whatever it is that I'm doing,

Maybe God help me,

An idiot captive of some kind of social stream by which I'm measuring the world around me,

How can I be in the midst of doing that,

Laughing at some real,

I think that's what,

And then boom,

I see something and the next thing I know,

I don't want to be in my own body.

I don't want my own life.

So I'm so material that it never dawns on me that each and every one of these ideas,

I,

And what it determines has caused itself,

Each and every one just appears and disappears.

And I'm never aware that they appear and disappear because I'm always identified with the reaction.

And then what that reaction points to as necessary for me to release myself from the very reaction that produced the me,

I don't want to be not one of those identities,

Not one sense of self derived from one of those reactions can change itself,

Let alone change the way it relates to the world around it by changing the world around it as it imagines it needs to be changed.

Are we still connecting?

Because I need to go on.

If I,

If I understand that these reactions have no intelligence of their own and no reaction has an intelligence of its own,

Meaning other than creating at the lower level of consciousness,

The situational awareness so that the instinctual center,

The rest of it can do what it needs to do.

Thank God,

When the reaction comes,

It brings me,

There's a shock,

The body's flooded with hormones.

But instead of that reaction,

Creating an awareness of what is within and without,

At the same time,

These reactions,

As they do at the animal level,

Always point to a danger or to something delightful.

And I avoid or run toward whatever it is that I'm being guided in that moment to do.

So if we understand that,

Here's the task,

Given,

Hopefully,

That we understand some of the discoveries we've looked at.

If I have any chance at all,

Any chance at all,

Of being in a relationship with this presence,

With this divine field,

As Rumi spoke of it,

Somewhere out there beyond right and wrong,

There is a field,

Meet me there.

Somewhere beyond the opposites,

There is a field where they are joined together and where no one fights,

Because everyone understands by the light of that awareness that you cannot hate or want to hurt.

You cannot be angry or frightened without first,

Without knowing it,

Having been deceived to look to this reaction to guide you into yet another field that promises freedom,

But that further encumbers you and that further serves to capture you.

If I'm going to ever have a relationship with this divine guidance,

I have to be and live within the light that that guidance provides.

This is the big question,

Isn't it?

How do I enter into that question,

Isn't it?

How do I enter into that light?

Thought isn't light.

Thought is matter,

Maybe dark matter at that.

Reactions in and of themselves,

The separate parts have no light in them.

It isn't until they are brought together that in that moment where they interact,

Much as you would strike a flint and see that spark,

By that spark produced by their interaction,

Suddenly there's a light that allows the observer to recognize the spark is the result of an interaction between these opposing forces.

And that light of that spark reveals these forces,

Not as being opposed to one another,

But in a beautiful symbiotic relationship that's celestial in origin.

How do we start to see that in these moments when,

As we are,

We are so habitually,

Instantaneously caught up in not wanting or wanting,

And in not wanting,

Looking to what doesn't want that moment to guide us to something that will free us from the thing we don't want?

How do we do that?

Here's a quick story to illustrate this idea.

So here's a young man,

A young woman,

And we'll say that she is vitally interested in photography.

Her interest in photography is because there's something in her that keeps trying to capture the moment that she sees objectively,

And to bring what she sees objectively into a consistently subjective experience of what that moment has revealed.

I don't mean to be complicated.

I'm just saying,

Don't you,

Look,

I've been on some trips to some beautiful places in the world,

Look,

I've been on some trips to some beautiful places in the world,

But I've stopped taking pictures of them because there's nothing more frustrating in the world than getting back and looking at a picture of something and realizing the picture doesn't possess anything at all what the moment was like,

And all the picture does is stimulate a memory,

And the memory of what is present,

Of what is full of light and alive,

The memory isn't full of light and life,

It's a memory,

It's dead.

Essentially,

It just produces familiar sensations that we call being alive.

So she wants to capture the experience of what happens when the light acts on what is in the dark,

And in their relationship is revealed something that enhances and captures both,

But she realizes she can't do it,

And she comes upon a man,

A master photographer,

And she's long admired his work,

But he comes out with a new book,

And she's gobsmacked.

It's just breathtaking,

And she realizes he's captured something that I want to capture,

And so she,

As one would,

I don't know why one wouldn't.

Honest to God,

I don't.

I don't,

I mean,

I do understand we are so captured by the reality that our reactions have spelled out,

And that keep telling us that the suffering we're in,

Or the potential joy is because of this,

That,

Or the other.

We need more of this and less of that.

I get it,

But if you're,

If you ever get to a place where you have a moment of understanding that there's something in you that longs to capture the whole of an understanding,

The whole of a moment,

And that you have stumbled one way or another on,

In this instance,

She finds a photographer who has brought something forward that she can absolutely feel herself.

She spends everything she can to go find and spend time with him,

And she does.

I better get going.

I'm running out of time.

So she gets there,

And he's not interested in her adoration.

He's not interested.

He's not looking to be confirmed,

But something about her convinces him that he's sincere,

And finally,

She gets to a point,

She says to him,

I'm dying to know how are you able to capture the light that you do?

She says,

Because when I can see somehow when you capture this light,

The light enhances the depth of the darkness.

Somehow the dimensions are expanded.

The experience is somehow broader because you capture this light,

And in that light,

All of the forms,

Even the ones that would almost never be seen,

Hinted at,

Intuited,

They appear in that dimensionality.

And he says to her,

Would you like to spend the afternoon with me?

I'm going to go take a picture of this beautiful waterfall that I saw.

Sure.

So they go there.

He says,

Meet me at 10 a.

M.

That's right when the sun will crest the hill that will allow that light to hit the falls.

She goes there.

He's there,

And she's expecting him to pull out these flash bulbs and light banks and all the rest of that that people use,

Especially indoors,

But he doesn't.

He just brings with him this odd-looking camera.

It reminds her of something that she saw when people took pictures back in the early 1800s,

Whenever they started taking pictures.

And he sets his stuff up,

And then he does something to the front of the camera.

He pulls something out,

And then he goes and he sits down on a blanket and pours himself a cup of coffee.

And she's looking around like,

What are you doing?

Let's take the picture.

And he says,

I am taking the picture.

Well,

I don't understand how you are taking the picture.

Nothing's snapping.

He said,

Real pictures are never taken in an instant snap.

He said,

What I'm after and what you've asked me about is how long can I expose this film?

How long can I expose this nature to the light that reveals not just what it's capturing outside,

But the sensitivity of this soul,

Of this self,

Of this film that is enhanced the longer the exposure takes place.

She said,

I don't understand.

He said,

I'm leaving the shutter of the camera open for as long as the light persists,

Because the more light I can capture,

The more life will be revealed in what has been captured.

This is what you and I have to understand when it comes to these moments that we don't want,

When these reactions come.

We have to leave the shutter of this self open.

We can't let it snap shut the way it does.

It's going to do that by itself,

But we are not the instrument of its will.

We are intended to have a will that allows us to retain our attention and to leave the exposure of the moment as long as it needs to be to capture all of the content inherent in that moment.

This is where we begin to agree to subject this nature that is passive to what wants to act upon it to reveal fully by its light,

The content of its character,

Its possibilities,

Positive and so-called negative.

All at once,

Expose the whole of this nature.

Don't go into thought.

Don't let reactions give you explanations.

They cannot guide you.

You can only understand this and then act upon this understanding.

The more clearly you see that a reaction does not a self make,

But rather a reaction is revealing the self that pops up in that reaction,

A conditioned nature that knows and has no conscience whatsoever and can only follow its own guidance.

If you want divine guidance,

Let the exposure take place for as long as it needs to for you to see all of the elements in that field.

And then in that exposure,

You will see the field is endless in its possibilities and so are you once you enter into that kind of guidance,

That kind of direction from the divine.

Let's get busy working at exposing everything that needs to be seen so that in that revelation we can be released from what is harmful to us and at the same time healing and helpful to everyone else.