by Guy Finley
The more we allow our mind to drift where – and will – as it pleases, the more likely will we find ourselves on the shoals of some unexpected suffering. Being in full command of ourselves is inseparable from being in command of our attention; there is no other order, and no other freedom.
Meet your Teacher
Grants Pass, OR, USA
Transcript
Here we go. Katie, Let's bring up the key lesson. It'll set the stage for our topic and discussion, And then we'll go from there. Read along with me. Please don't post while I'm reading. The more we allow our mind to drift where and will as it pleases, The more likely we will find ourselves having fallen on the shoals of some unexpected suffering. It doesn't read that way, But that's what I want it to say. The more likely we will find ourselves having fallen into some form of unexpected suffering. Being in full command of ourselves is inseparable from being in command of our attention. There is no other order and no other freedom. The more we allow our mind to drift where and will it as it pleases, The more often we will find ourselves having fallen into some form of unexpected suffering. I think if we're honest at all with ourselves, And we must be, That we have to ask ourselves, And then maybe say your age to yourself, How many times does someone do something or something goes in a certain way I didn't expect? I get a text. Someone suggests I make a mistake. How many times before a person starts to realize that we always have invariably some form of the same reaction? And that reaction comes replete with an endless host of explanations, Justifications for why we need to go on the defense and ensure that everyone understands it isn't we who have, If you will, Fallen down, But rather something terrible befell us, Not of our own choosing, And that our responsibility now is to make sure that we correct anyone, Everything around us. I want to look at this very deeply with you today. I have a quick story, Then we're going to have what I hope will be a fascinating study, Open all of our eyes to whatever extent it's possible to see something we don't see now. So here's a young woman, And she works for a pharmaceutical company that makes natural organic ingredients. And they're always, As are companies in this world today, In constant competition. And she, Along with another company competing, Has heard about this field of healing flowers high in a mountain plain that's almost inaccessible. And she wants to get there, Obviously, To collect flowers, Make the constituent study, And perhaps capture the compounds that make these things so healing. But she doesn't know how to get there by herself, Meaning it's a difficult climb. So she looks around and goes on LinkedIn or wherever it is, And not coincidentally, She's contacted shortly thereafter by a pair of guides who promise her they know the range and will be able to deliver her safely to her destination. So off they go. I have to make this story quick because there's so much to cover. Get with the spirit of it, Okay? And it isn't two or three days before they're making some kind of treacherous, Somewhat treacherous passage between places, And she falls. And fortunately, She's not hurt, But it delays the journey. And this happens five, Six times. Now, Try to understand that every night when they camp, These guides, As they should do, Prepare the campground, Build a fire, Even prepare the food, And make sure every morning that everything's packed back up, Everyone's backpacks have the right equipment, Stuff in it, So forth, And so on. Off they go. Now, Long story short, It isn't too long before, As they're making this climb, One of the Sherpas, One of the people carrying some of this stuff, An old man, Really, She keeps noticing that every time she throws her backpack on the morning, He's shaking his head, No, This old man, This old Sherpa represents a certain wisdom that we are not awake to yet. You could call it intuition. And then she falls two or three more times, Never too dangerous, But definitely falls, Hurts herself, Injured, Delays the climb. And one day, When she's getting ready to put on her backpack, The old man shaking his head, No, She says, Why are you shaking your head, No, Every time I get ready? And he points, He doesn't say anything, He just points to her backpack, What about it? And then she thinks, Well, Maybe it is heavy. Long story short, She unpacks her backpack, And there's rocks at the bottom of the backpack. And she said, How do rocks get in the back, In the bottom of my backpack? No wonder I'm, It feels like all the time, Gravity has this hold on me, No wonder I fall over. And so having realized what's going on, And what's going on, Is that her supposed guides, Instead of trying to help her get someplace, Are actually working for the company opposed to her interest. And when they pack her backpack in the morning, They put these stones in so that climbing this mountain, Gravity will make her fall backwards, Which it's done several times. She succeeds, Gets there, Because she fires the guides, No longer with the stones, Just the old Sherpa. And when she's interviewed, Because her company becomes very successful, The story gets out how these competitive companies tried to sabotage her discovery. And she's asked, Aren't you angry with these, With this company for doing what they did? And she said, No, Actually, I'm not at all. Because if it wasn't for them, I wouldn't have learned what turned out to be maybe the two most important lessons in my life. What are they? The reporter asks her. She says, First, I really believe that I couldn't succeed in making the climb without them. And because of the belief that I couldn't succeed without them helping me, I was fully dependent on them. And because I was fully dependent on them, I trusted to pack my backpack every morning. But that is just one of the main lessons I learned. The second one is more important. Please, Said the reporter, Tell me. So the second lesson is that I looked for the problem. How should I say? She said, The last place that I looked for the problem of falling down the mountain should have been the first place I examined. The last place I looked for why I kept falling should have been the first place I examined. I was so caught up. It never dawned on me that this weight at the bottom of my backpack was pulling me down the mountain. I hope you get the feeling of the story. I didn't have time to develop it as I would. But the point being that something opposed to her wishes for healing was sabotaging her wishes, Even as it seemed to promise her a way in which to promote her interests. Is that much clear? Make sure we're all on the same page before I get into the material, Please. We're always looking in the wrong place, Blaming, For instance, Whatever we do. Because we don't know the first place to look when we fall down. You've heard, I trust the expression, An unexamined life isn't worth living. Very old saying. Why do you think that's true, That an unexamined life isn't worth living? Because the fact is, We can't see, Let alone understand the intricate workings of our own interior life. We have no insight at all. There is this unconscious nature, The weight of the past, That is constantly pulling on us with no awareness on our part of it. And that we have no present recognition of this relationship we have with all of these moving parts of ourselves that are packed quite tightly, Are they not, Into the way we respond to unwanted moments. But so familiar are they, And so trusting are we of these habitual reactions, That we never suspect that instead of helping us climb, Instead of helping us rise above these unwanted moments, They are in fact part of the root of it. Let's look at it. Let's look at it. I've often said, And I will repeat again, That we live in a world that is so much more infinitely invisible than what we're able to perceive with our senses, That it doesn't even dawn on us. It's not part of how we see things. We see things very fundamentally, What I want, What I don't want. We have no awareness of the mechanism of desire. We have no real awareness at all of what moves us to or from something, Let alone what makes us reach for something or what causes us to fall backwards. And here's the point. The experience of the fact that we live in a world that is mostly imperceptible is undeniable. Because the matrix of this invisible world, This unconscious nature that we live within and as a part of, Is a world of laws. And the ignorance of the laws that govern our interior life, And we are completely ignorant of them. We live under the law of, You did this, I'll do that. They won't do this, I've got to go do that. We live in the law of opposites. We don't understand what drives us to make the choices we do. But the fact is the ignorance of these laws, And I'll get into this and it's not complicated, Does not mean that we aren't subject to them. Just like a person saying to the highway patrol, Listen, You know, I didn't see the sign that said 65 miles an hour. Doesn't mean they're not going to get a ticket. We are subject to certain laws, Certainly outside of ourselves, And we can question those if we want to. But we can't question the laws that determine the way we live and what we experience as we go through our life, Unaware of these laws, Let alone how. So often we feel locked down when these laws exact their pound of flesh, If you will, Because we're not aware of their influences. So now I ask you a question. I want to tie these two things together. The story about the sabotage of a competing company, That did not want our young heroine to succeed in our own life. Have you ever asked yourself, And I hope you have, But not in passing, Why do I keep falling down? Especially when, Just as our heroine did, You fall down and then you think to yourself, Well, I didn't this, They didn't that. I never suspect there is something connected to my own consciousness that produces this constant state of falling down. And part of falling down, That we don't realize this, Is that when we try to fix the problem, Given what we are told has produced it, We haven't fixed the problem. We've simply guaranteed that we're going to fall down again because we're looking in all of the wrong places. We don't understand what's really taking place, Especially in those moments when, And then you fill in the blanks, You have a confrontation with somebody. Now you might think to yourself, I'm right for being this angry, But you and I both know no one ever becomes inflamed, Angry, Or negative that doesn't suffer their own anger, And then eventually question whether or not they were the kind of human being they wanted to be. Some kind of unwanted moment comes along, And there's a summary conflict, And each instance like that, Whether it's some kind of regret, Inflamed by some kind of resentment, We both understand that in those moments we become embroiled in some kind of negative state, And once we're embroiled in this negative state that is inseparable from not just having fallen, But trying to free ourselves from all of the ways in which we explain why we fell, We say, How in the world did I get here? That's all I'm working on. How did I get here? How did I get to a point where I wake up in the morning and I'm still having a conversation with somebody that's dead? How did I fall into this tiny world where the smallest thing can make me crazy? How did I fall into that world? And I want to be clear on that word, Fall. Did you ever hear anybody say, I fell into a good habit? We don't fall into good habits. Good habits, Rising above problem habits, Requires work. No, When we fall the way that we do and always have done, Like the expression, I fell off of the wagon, When we fall like that, There's usually accompanying that some kind of guilt, Blame, Shame, Accompanying that some kind of guilt, Blame, Shame. And then we take the judgment of ourselves for having fallen. I said the stupidest thing. My mask fell off and somebody saw the real negativity behind my smile. I'm hoping that you've asked a hundred, If not a thousand times, How is it that I fell into this condition that I've fallen into and believed I extricated myself a thousand times? I've explained it and yet I still keep falling. Pause here. How many of you keep falling? I know that you do. Keep falling. I know that you do. I want you to look and see. Well, It's true. And judging yourself for having fallen is not the proof that you didn't fall, That something took place that we don't know what happens. Nice transition. Deep breath, Everybody. On one hand, We understand that when we fall down physically, We have misstepped or one way or the other lost our balance. And what happens? Gravity pulls us down. We are all the time, Every living creation is in a constant struggle with a form of gravity, That which is trying to pull us down, And that which wants to be erect, Reach for the sun, Reach for the light. But we're no longer talking about simple gravity. The false guides knew that by putting stones in our heroine's backpack, That gravity would work against her. So it is true, Though we do not understand it here, That when this unwanted moment comes, Oh my God, What's that? Why did they do that when that disturbance appears? I want to understand why is it that we fall into negative states? Why do we fall into negative states? You can't argue that. We fall into a negative state. Why is it so difficult to escape those states once we fall into them? And we know that's true. Why does it take so much work, So much psychological maneuvering, Squirming, Trying to figure out ways to escape whatever it is that we say fell in on us? No event in life falls in on you or me. No event in life falls in on you. What happens is when an event comes along that isn't expected, Meaning it is unwanted because of a prior preconceived expectation, In that moment a reaction comes. And here's the first point of the first part of the talk. The world did not fall in on you. You fell into a unwanted reaction. You fell in. I fall into a reaction. And then the rest unfolds mechanically. Let's look at this. Start with some truths that we already know because we've studied them, But it'll help. All negative reactions begin where? You can't have a negative reaction without what? Without some form of a summary instantaneous resistance to the moment. There is no negative reaction without some kind of resistance that takes place. And the moment that resistance comes up, It's kind of a sudden stress, A strain. In that moment, That resistance produces what follows which are all of the various negative reactions that are very important to that unconscious nature because the reaction to the resistance is necessary to that consciousness to explain to itself, To you, Why it is that you're having that reaction. And we have no awareness at all that we live with a certain kind of unconscious body in an unconscious body of a certain level of consciousness that isn't just yours. It does have its type because of our environment, Culture, Religion, So forth and so on. But this is the humanity itself lives in an unconscious body. And this unconscious body is replete with all of its conditioning, Not just separate conditioning, Like we grew up this kind of person with these kind of parents telling us this was what's valuable, This wasn't. But all of that conditioning that runs entirely through the veins of this consciousness, Where we come into this life preconditioned to have certain relationships with life, It's built into us. And we have no awareness of this unconscious nature of this resistance until what happens. Someone says something happens, I watch the news, And just like that, And here's where the word comes in, You know it pretty well, I'm triggered. But our mind, This unconscious nature says, I've been triggered by what you said. I've been triggered by the way this event went. You were not triggered by anything. Who you are cannot be triggered any more than the ocean can be triggered into becoming a desert. Love can't be triggered into becoming hatred or anger. In that moment, What is triggered is an unconscious nature that has met that moment with a demand that I didn't know came into that moment with me. I've talked about this a thousand times. So there cannot be this habitual resistance, This mechanical resistance, Without our being identified with some image or belief that came into that moment with us, An opinion, A belief, Some ideology that came into that, And then that condition triggers it. And when that identity is challenged, That unconscious nature that sits behind it, That is the source of that unconscious nature, Then all it knows how to do is what? You and I both know it. We feel something pull us down, Something grabs us, Something makes us a prisoner of something. And the next thing we know, There's another reaction followed by a subsequent struggle to escape what that mind has said has caused the misery. I want to make one point very clear. The condition has not produced the misery. The misery is born out of being in an unconscious relationship with a series of reactions and responses that don't know anything to do other than to fight with the moment because it challenges our identity. It's not the world that has fallen in on us. It is we who have fallen into an unconscious form of identification with our own negative reaction. We have fallen into an unconscious reaction, An unconscious identification with our own reaction. Somebody does something summary judgment. Where does that judgment come from? The judgment comes from something that was set off because that person doesn't act the way we expect to see them act. And that resistance, Which is always some form of opposition, Where what is taking place shouldn't be the way it is that this nature come into the moment thinks it should be. And just like that resistance, Reaction, Reaction, Identification. I hope you can see this with me. This is why I say an unexamined life isn't worth living. It sounds complicated, Maybe if you've never looked or thought about it. But I tell you, It's no more complicated than watching a leaf fall from a tree or a tree blow in the wind. It's all unfolding all the time. We're just not present to it because our attention has been captured and put on something that that unconscious nature wants us to look at and consider so it can validate the feeling of being a victim. Continuing, When we fall into any form of identification, When we fall into any form of identification, It is exactly the same as having fallen into an unseen relationship with the dark workings of a kind of an invisible government. When we fall into when we fall into any form of identification, We are falling into a world that was set up prior to the moment that caused us to feel like something got hold of us. And that world that we are falling into for all intents and purposes is literally an invisible government. This is why Saint Paul said, We struggle not with flesh and blood, But with powers and principalities. We struggle not with flesh and blood. You and I think we struggle with flesh and blood, The flesh and blood of this idiot, The flesh and blood of my own stupidity. Judgment is always towards some external recognized form. Instead of realizing the judgment is part of the way in which this invisible government inside of ourselves hides itself and its actions from us. The Aramaic translation of powers and principalities is exactly that, Something that governs the mind and the hearts of human beings. And we don't understand that we fall into that. And when we fall into it, Part of having fallen into it is now accepting everything that that mind, Everything that that level of consciousness starts to talk to us about. And isn't it a mind blower how immediately I know everything that's wrong with everyone and everything else, Following the resistance to an unwanted moment, The reaction that comes up, And that then I am ruled by that reaction because I've fallen into a world that creates the rules that determine my reality for me. So that we actually sustain those laws, Sustain their influence over us, Not to mention the whole world, Every single time that we fall, As we do, Into identification with this reaction, With the duality of being identified with something. And then to follow up with the idea, Which I really want to build on with you, Because I want, Look, If nothing else, If you can see or sense any of this is true, Maybe the next time that you fall down, Instead of hating yourself or blaming the condition that you say fill in on you, You'll want to understand a little bit more, Like how that sudden resistance in that reaction, The identification with it is the same as falling into an unconscious world, That as long as we remain in that world, We will remain under its power. Because the only choices that we have in those moments, When we are identified with the reaction, Is what the whole of that unconscious nature says, These are your choices. Try to escape one more time, Avoid this person, Run from anything that even looks like it's going to fall in on you. Imagine, Fear, I've always said, Doesn't exist without negative imagination. And it's true, It doesn't. So if fear doesn't exist without negative imagination, What is it that I'm imagining when I'm thinking about taking on a new responsibility? Or maybe I'm just listening to the speaker here, And it feels confusing, And I start to go, I don't understand, What is it that I'm reacting to? I feel like something's falling in on me, It's too heavy, Life is too difficult, It's never too heavy, It's never too difficult for us to not learn the essential lesson, Which is where to look in the first place. Think about this with me, Just for a minute. If we were in class, I would engage you this way. I said that, Here's the, Oh my god, I can't have an oh my god, Unless the moment challenges some interior god in me that has determined and created a world in its own image, And says, Oh my god, This can't be right. And we assume that our negative reaction, Born out of this unconscious summary resistance, That that negative reaction, Because it's so powerful and so efficient in providing a sense of self, We believe instantaneously that that resistance, That reaction is not just who we are, But that we are under the threat of what that reaction says has happened, And the minute that happens, The identification throws us literally into the world, Into that government that we don't see operating within us. Just follow me. Doesn't this interior government have its own department of justice? You know the government outside, It has a department of justice. Doesn't your own interior government have a department of justice? Of course it does. It summarily rules. Only this judge that inside of us, This department of justice, The blindfold, She's not blindfolded. Something in us sees and summarily weighs every moment of our life against the predetermined conditioned expectation, And when you, They, This or them doesn't act according to Hoyle, When you say or do what disturbs me in that moment, The ruling is in, And I now am the judge and jury of everyone and everything outside of me that has failed to, Or more accurately, That seems to have caused me to lose my freedom. So there's an interior department of justice. You've seen those movies where these huge, What do they call them, Huge buildings, Warehouses, And the point of view for the viewer is that the shelves go on for a million years long and a thousand feet high, Filled with boxes and records. This is this unconscious nature, And anytime everything happens, There's an instantaneous, Although we don't see it, Hold on, And it runs through that warehouse looking for what it needs to make sure not only it understands what's happened to it, But what the ruling is that has to be given to the person or the moment that's taken place. This interior government has its own department of justice. I'm asking you, Can you see that? It drops the gavel. How about this? Doesn't this interior unconscious government, The powers and principalities, Doesn't it have its own department of corrections? Doesn't it? And the department of corrections has its own prison system. Everything you see in the world around you is a fabrication of an unconscious nature at the level of sorrow, Pain, Suffering, That has simply cast out into this world what it needs in order to mirror itself and to feel itself separate from the department of justice, Or I should say, I should say injustice, The department of prisons. Judge not that ye be not judged. What was Christ saying? You're listening to a wrong government within yourself, And as you try to imprison people within the confines of your own conclusions, It is you who are confined by this department of corrections, Not the person. How about the endless, Talk about government waste, Division after division of planning. Boy, There's nothing that brings all the staff, All the surreptitious sense of self to the forefront than something that runs counter to a plan that we've got. And not only does it run counter to a and not only does it run counter to a plan, But suddenly something could happen. You have some, Oh my God, That'll be great. And in that moment, What happens? Instead of resistance, There's an attraction. And when that attraction comes, Summarily there is this identification and the same process takes place again. Do you, Have you not seen inside of yourself that when there's a hope or a promise of some pleasure to come, That then you can't, You literally can't stop thinking about it. That's because that identification with that desire and the hope that it will complete you, Throws you down into that incomplete dark government that is always trying to figure out how it needs to plan in order to pull off what it believes will make it whole. Except there's one problem with this division of planning in this unconscious nature. And the problem with the division of planning is that it's always planning against itself without knowing it. Which is very much like the division of planning here on this earth, Isn't it? We set plans in place and then we become identified with the plan that we didn't even make, But that we were drawn into because it seemed like it would make us whole. And the more we get aligned with and desire the plan to work out the way it does, The more subject we are to anything that challenges our plan. And when the plan is challenged, Instead of suspecting, Sorry, Instead of suspecting this government, Then now we just go back into another stage of planning. Yes, Denise, Exactly. We're confined by our own conclusions and we're held captive by them because each time a conclusion is challenged, As it always will be, Because it's imagined, Meaning the identity derived from it, We're always going to find ourselves loving one and despising the other. It's built into it. Yes, Exactly. Yes, Tony, Especially when we come across someone imposing our values or their values on us. I know what's best for you. Okay, Let me keep going because we've got a couple more minutes. So I didn't have time to go through this and I don't know if you would do it. What other departments are there? How many departments are there? And I'm not saying that we have to specifically identify them. What we're looking to do in a talk like this is to recognize that we do live in a world that is so vastly larger, Infinitely larger in its invisibility than our present capacity to see, That it behooves us once we start to understand, Because truth has invited us to do so, It behooves me instead of falling back and trusting the departments, Trusting the guides. Instead of doing that, I have to start realizing that the great lesson here is that I'm always guided to look in the wrong place. And where I need to be guided can't be given to me by those guides because their interests don't serve mine. Those interests of those guides serves the continuity of this unconscious nature of my own past. So if we can take all of this into some kind of context, Here's where we would arrive. But what I'm about to describe isn't something that you do, How do I say, It isn't another form of resistance. This is key. We are resistance reliant. We have a great reliance on resistance to release us from the conditions we blame for our captivity. No resistance can ever release you from what you don't want because the experience that you're having of not wanting that moment begins with resistance. We have to be able to see these things because until we see them, We are, As I've said, Constantly relying on this resistance, The reaction that comes, And then the identification. And once we fall into that reaction and its identification, We are done. We have fallen into a world that we cannot see, Where we are given the eyes, So to speak, And the light, So to speak, That points to where we have to go and what choices are when the choices are being made for us by a department that lives in the dark of this nature. Here's the exercise. Simply put, You might just write these four words down, Then I'll explain it. Don't fall for it. Don't fall for it. I watch all the time. You see people in their car, Their gaze is blank. They don't even know they're driving. You sit at a table with people, You're in a meeting. Somebody says something and you can, You know, It might be a good thing if when people have this reaction, This identification, And they're remanded over to a world that says it sees and understands, If you could see their eyes roll back in their head and all there was was the whites, Like some kind of zombie, That'd be very helpful, Wouldn't it? To realize I'm no longer talking to a human being, I'm talking to the Department of Correction, The Department of Justice, The Department of Planning. There's no one there. We have to see all the time. When you are lost in thought, It isn't you doing the thinking. It is you deriving the experience, The sensation of it. But sensation of self does not a self make. Sensation of self is the continuation of a set of reactions bringing up an identity, Each identity replete with its own government. When Christ said, Thy name is legion, Every last one of these eyes, Every eye that doesn't want you to be this way, Every eye that says the world should be that way, Every eye that judges me, Every eye that finds fault with something, Every last one of these momentary identities comes with its own government, Its own system. And once we've fallen into that system, Our life, The source of every choice we make, Is made by that system. Don't fall for it. That isn't to say don't resist the moment. That's to say, Notice where this resistance, Suddenly, There's a reaction. Can I be present enough, Instead of trusting the guide of that reaction that says, Do this, You'll be released. Can I understand enough, Given the lessons I'm learning, To realize, Wait a minute, Don't fall for it. Don't fall into identifying with any reaction. And the only way you can not fall into identifying with these reactions is when you have put two and two together through a new kind of awareness that makes it clear to you, You know what? I have never had pain in my life that didn't start with a reaction telling me what's caused it, What to do about it, And then the subsequent angst and worry produced by the choices I make are connected to that government, Not to what is real. Don't fall into identification with any reaction. Become the observer of the reaction, Instead of the nature that serves it, And that you, In serving it, Steals your life from you. Because what happens when you identify with a reaction? We know the minute this identification takes place, This duality, The split second that happens, An avalanche of negative thoughts and feelings then fall in on you. But the only way that these dark thoughts and feelings can fall in on you is if you are in the pit that the blind within you led you to, And everything that's falling in on you is doing what? It is justifying the suffering. It is supplying explanations for why there's this problem. When we fall, We fall into the past. When we fall, It is into a body of knowledge that is divided up into good and evil. All falling is into the past, Into the person that lives in the past, Which is an imagined person who has imagined problems because they have an imagined success and an imagined set of demands that have been placed on others. We fall into the past, Into a conditioned body that is prepared on the spot to justify all of the pain it's in, Followed by a summary judgment of ourselves and everyone else. Don't fall for it. Will you work that way? Just, If nothing else, When you feel something grab you, You can feel it pulling you down. Don't fall for it. Then become awake instead of going to sleep in the stream of thoughts and feelings that want to explain to you what the pain is. Don't go to sleep. Choose to be awake and to suffer the onset of these reactions and the identification because if you'll suffer them consciously, You will see how that self wants to supply you with everything that it needs to continue suffering so that it can escape, To continue suffering so that it can escape, Which it never does, Into the next set of circumstances, Which is just the continuity of the past. Study the interior government. Don't fall into the reaction that supplies the identity that in turn gives you all of the choices that belong to a world that is in fact in the dark and without any choices other than to ensure it keeps the same sense of self in place.
