See How You’re Secretly Imprisoning Yourself GF Live 6-14-25

We're going to look at this idea that most of us find very hard to believe,

If not impossible to believe,

And that is that when it comes to our suffering,

Our useless suffering,

Our useless pain,

That we're responsible for it.

We live in a world that increasingly,

And look at the news today,

I am the way I am because of my enemies.

And of course,

It strikes very few people that there's another way in which a human being is intended to live on this planet in which,

Yes,

There may be adversaries of a physical nature,

But what has that got to do with hatred?

What has that got to do with our inability to love our neighbors as ourselves?

Because we don't understand the word love.

We don't understand what it means.

And what I want to look at with you is this idea of how,

And we can put the talk title up now,

Kate.

We can start with that.

The end of painful seeking begins with seeing how you and I are secretly imprisoning ourselves.

No one believes they imprison themselves.

We all believe we are captives of conditions we can't control,

And that the solution is to change the condition,

Although that has failed for thousands and thousands of years to make a difference.

We still are adherence to the idea that somehow who and what we are meant to be waits for us in a time to come and nothing can be further from the truth.

So whether we're talking about some of these strange ideas,

Christ,

I mean,

What did he sell all and follow me?

Seek ye first the kingdom of heaven.

Lose your life and find it,

The four noble truths that have to do with proving that this world is full of suffering,

But not because the suffering isn't useful,

But because we don't understand the nature of the desire that produces it.

All of these things that run through the great teachings,

The stories of the great men and women who,

In one way or another,

Have helped sow the seeds of truth into this world that you and I now sit here,

God willing,

Immersing ourselves in.

What is all of that journey about?

And in essence,

As is true for you and I,

Maybe we don't see it,

Everybody's trying to solve the mystery of their life.

Why am I here?

Why do I have to do what I have to do?

Why am I going through what I'm going through?

When will it end?

It's endless,

The questions we ask ourselves without ever really trying to figure out what is the nature of these questions and what am I being driven to?

I want to understand my life,

And I can't understand my life without understanding myself.

But I don't understand myself.

I think I do because I can quote authorities.

I have gurus and teachers,

And I'm able to mimic their words and believe that my understanding is the same as the freedom that real understanding brings when it's clear it doesn't.

So one of the things that we need if we're ever going to solve this mystery of our life,

Of ourselves,

Is we have to understand,

Not by thinking about it,

But by seeing the fact that you and I live in two worlds at once,

At least two worlds at once.

And I'm not talking about the world in your home and the world as office.

I'm saying we live in a world that sees only what it wants to see,

Regardless of the circumstances.

So if there's a problem,

What that nature wants to see is the reason for the problem,

Or that nature doesn't want to see that problem because it doesn't know what to do with it.

So we live in a world in which we see only what we want to see,

And then regret too late that we didn't see it.

I was blind,

But now I see.

So there's that world,

The blind leading the blind.

And then there's another world that we have hints of,

From which all true teachings come,

And that is that there's a higher order of being,

Not an intellectual concept,

But the fact that there's another nature in us,

Another order of light that can see what this lower nature can't see.

So when I want what I want,

I can't see what is going to come as a result of that ambition or that blind desire,

What I'm going to do to myself or others.

I can't see that.

But from time to time,

I get an inclination,

Such as an addict might,

When he or she is about to induce something into their body again that they've known for 5,

10,

20 years,

Is killing them.

And then one day,

Maybe they recognize,

You know what?

This isn't good for me.

How strange is it there's something in me that says it is good and wants it?

So until a certain kind of integration takes place,

Where an individual is present at once to this nature that desires what it wants and doesn't care what it does to itself or others,

And at the same time,

An awareness,

A light,

A Christ within that can see that this source of contentment that I'm looking for is killing me.

So that there I am,

I'm in this crucible,

As St.

Paul would say,

I don't do the good I would,

I do the evil I would not.

So I'm in this place where I see what's good,

And I know it's there,

But I'm powerless to act it out.

God help me,

I can't stop being greedy,

Angry,

Fearful,

Negative,

Revisiting the past,

Victimized by my own thoughts and feelings and blaming others for my continual wish to be absorbed in them.

Can you see what I'm saying so far with you?

I'm just setting the stage.

Yes,

Please,

You can post on the board,

It helps if we're all on the same page.

So this change that needs to take place,

Christ spoke,

He said,

The first must be last,

The last will be first,

The first will be last.

Something has to turn around.

Another word in New Testament teaching,

Repent does not mean,

You know,

Be morally hate yourself.

It means to turn around a new mind,

Metanoia,

First,

Last,

Last,

First.

And this metanoia,

This change,

As we will look at over the next week together,

Represents a journey that isn't through time and space,

Because that's what desire is.

Desire sets us on a fool's chase into the time when we will be free of what we don't want to be.

It's not a journey through time and space,

But into the consciousness that creates the illusion of separation that in turn drives these desires to bring about the end of that pain of feeling alone and isolated.

So this is what it means to discover the truth of ourselves,

Is to turn inward and begin to understand that we have another nature altogether,

That until it is awakened and begins to be able to show us what we do not know about ourselves as true,

We will suffer from living from the lie of a nature that's always telling us it knows who we are and what we need to do.

If we're all set with that first part,

I'm going to make the transition.

Are we all set?

We're 10 minutes in.

So here I am.

I'm a man.

I'm a woman.

To whatever degree I've begun to suspect somehow or other that there's an initial problem,

Something interfering,

And I have the words of past masters,

True teachers,

Not this phony baloney psychopathic set of liars passing themselves off as teachers today,

Filling you with all kinds of motivation in order to acquire the next thing that desire says will make you whole.

How in the name of God,

For instance,

Did a Buddha or a Christ or any of the great teachers,

How did Buddha come to a full stop?

What took place in the nature of Christ's life,

In the nature of his teachings that set the stage,

If you will,

For the truth that sets us free?

What's all involved in that?

What's the nature of that moment where,

Like Paul on the road to Damascus,

Suddenly I see and I see that I was blind and I'm actually blinded by the light that reveals just how dark my life was.

What's going on in that?

That's what I want to look at with you.

What is this pain?

How come I can tell others what to do,

But when it comes time for me to be a true human being,

I can't find anything that I'm looking for other than rationalization for why I just came undone.

This is what we're going to look at.

What is this pain?

So,

Briefly,

Because I'm going to use Siddhartha,

The Buddha.

I'm not going to go into the history.

It's not even important in one respect other than he was born in isolation.

The prince of a king and queen,

Nobility,

And parents that wanted to keep him from seeing the world around him so that he would believe in the world they believed in and they were trying.

If they believed,

His mother and father,

That the world was really this wonderful place,

But why would he need to be isolated from it?

Here he is and he discovers because he goes outside the walls and he sees all this sickness.

He sees all this poverty.

And like everybody else,

He can see it,

But unlike everybody else,

Something within him says,

How can this be?

My parents can explain it away,

Meaning my thoughts and feelings,

The past has all the reasons for why I see what I do and all the promises that one day it won't be when I ascend and become this out of the other,

Then I'll make these changes.

No,

In that moment and from that moment on,

The inability to explain to himself this incredible contradiction between something in him that knew without taking thought that all of this pain somehow he was involved in and that shouldn't be the way it is and that no explanation.

God help us one day to realize there is no justification for harming ourselves or another human being,

Regardless how well intended are those means to that end.

So what happens?

The story goes,

He wanders around for six or seven years.

And by the way,

That number six reflects,

It's all traditional ideas.

The number of heavens,

The number seven perfection,

Just like 40 days and 40 nights,

The great flood Christ in the desert,

40 days before all these numbers represent the moment of completion of something.

So here he is after seven years and something happens to him.

Wandering around an aesthetic,

Studying under other masters,

He had two principal teachers,

One of them offered Buddha a place along his side as a co-founder of that teaching.

He denied both.

He didn't want it.

What happened?

And to briefly say it during this time,

This time of completion that could be that's inseparable from seeing the whole of something,

What he realized was that despite all of the things that he had been through,

All of the disciplines,

The teachings,

The meditation techniques across the board,

He realized something fundamental under all of those,

Under all of that guise.

And what was it that he saw?

He saw that desires,

Even seemingly the loftiest of them,

Could not lead him,

Let alone bring him to understand his suffering,

Let alone to escape it and enter into a world or a set of conditions that would finally free him from whatever it was that set him out on this quest to begin with,

Which is what in the name of God is all of this pain and how has it produced this world that we're in?

This world did not produce the pain we feel.

This pain produced a world in pain.

And the world cannot explain the pain because whatever the world uses to explain the pain simply gives us something else to aim for downstream in another time that always proves to be the time we're in right now,

Which is not understanding our pain and suffering.

Are you following me?

I'm not asking if you like what I'm saying.

I'm just asking if you can understand it.

I have the first key lesson.

I'm going to ask Kate to bring it up,

It'll summarize,

And then we'll set the stage for the next part of this talk.

Read along with me,

Please.

Don't discount it.

The end of suffering is not found in the pursuit of freedom from suffering.

But in seeing through the very nature of desires that generates the suffering to begin with.

The problem is not with what we desire.

But the identification with desire itself and the endless cycle of division that it creates.

You would be wise to write that down or copy it off of the board.

The end of suffering is not found in the pursuit of freedom from suffering,

But in seeing through the very nature of desire that generates the suffering to begin with.

This is what's behind the four noble truths.

This is what's behind the idea of sell all and follow me,

Because what is it that I have to sell?

All I own are the objects of desire now planted in my mind as conditioned ideals or promises that never produce the pleasure other than seemingly temporarily.

So how do I bring this key lesson down to earth?

Real time for you and me.

Quick quiz,

If you're ready for it.

How many of you ever heard the expression,

Be careful what you pray for?

You put your hand up or just go,

Yay.

And why should you be careful for what you pray for?

I mean,

You know the expression.

And the answer is because you might just get it.

Such wisdom in these little.

Be careful what you pray for.

Why?

You might get it.

How am I going to understand that?

All I know to do,

God help me,

Is pray for the beginning of some new plan that will produce some new power.

Pray for the end of some pain so I can escape the misery of my own thoughts and feelings that victimize me.

All I know to do is to pray for things to free me.

All I know to do is to pray to pray to the gods.

And don't you don't you dare think that what you that what you call God is God.

Your God is what your mind turns to in a moment where there's a trial.

And if fear appears,

It's fear that becomes your God,

Because fear tells you revisit the past,

Change it back,

Then get rid of this person.

Something is always telling you something to do,

That after it's done,

Then you might be free because you'll have changed the conditions.

The truth never says change the conditions.

The truth says change the consciousness responsible for the perception of that condition.

Then you'll understand what freedom is,

Because it's not the world that has to change and it can't change until the consciousness responsible for its constant appearance does.

Be careful what you pray for,

You might what get it,

You might just get it.

So are you ready?

Take a nice deep breath with me.

This is all good.

One day you'll understand it's all good.

One day you'll be in the midst of seeing.

I don't want to know this.

I don't want to see this.

I'm not interested.

Leave me alone.

And you will see the good of seeing those parts of yourself denying the Christ,

Denying the truth,

Denying what is already right in front of you to rescue you,

To release you,

To open your eyes.

You'll see the fact of it.

What is the one thing in two words that that always comes before any form of conflict with conditions or with others that's always there before some pain and disappointment,

Anxiety and self-doubt?

What are the two words that always comes before any form of resistance to any given moment,

Past,

Present or future?

Tony writes,

I prefer,

Um,

Oh,

Sorry,

That's not it.

No.

Anybody want to guess what the two words are?

I know you can't get it because it's stunning because of the implications.

Nope.

It's not.

I know I got to move on.

I got so much to give you.

Write it down.

Here are the two words that come before every form of useless suffering.

I want.

I want you to be other than you are.

I don't want this pain.

I want the world to be this way.

Not that way.

I want to be someone who didn't go through what I had to go through.

I'm someone who doesn't want to go through it again.

There is no suffering psychologically.

And for the most part,

Even physically,

In terms of being negative about it,

About physical pain without,

I want without the demand inherent in some form of desire that has gone before you to make sure the road is as crooked as it can get so that when you get to those points where you run into something,

That same want,

That same desire can say,

Well,

Here's the straight path.

Here's what you need to do.

And then it will point to a place downstream in time where if you just do this or do that,

Get rid of him or her,

Then finally you'll be free of that pain,

Failing to see in that moment that you are blind to the fact that what you are following is the very nature that produced the pain to begin with.

Are you able to see this with me?

There is no such thing as what we want or don't want that doesn't exist without some object of desire there before us in the moment.

Why do I argue with people?

I don't want you to conflict with what I believe is true.

I get upset when you challenge my opinion.

Why?

Because I want my opinion to go unchallenged because my identity is established in it so that whether it's a belief,

An opinion,

A plan,

Some ideal,

No matter what it is that this mind has grabbed onto and turned into an anchor of a sort,

That very nature of my identification with belief,

Opinion,

Plan,

Whatever it might be,

The very nature of identification is attachment.

The nature of attachment is dependency.

And the moment that you're dependent upon any temporary fluctuating conditional belief and all beliefs are conditional.

Why are they all conditional?

Because they require the conditions to remain in place for you to identify and believe yourself to be the one who holds that to be true above all other things.

Have you not seen it?

I'm full of love until you're not.

I love God until suddenly,

Why is God doing this to me?

I'm full of compassion,

Kindness until you cross me.

And then out the door goes all of the things that I say I believe in,

Because in that moment,

Under those circumstances,

The conditions demand that another identity in my self surface that must protect itself from what it sees as a threat.

And what does it see as a threat?

Anything that challenges what I'm identified with,

And there is no identification without unconscious desire,

Without some image that has appeared as a rescuing God or rescuing savior,

That's going to remove me and release me from whatever this misery is.

And downstream,

I will at last no longer suffer the inequities of this world.

How extraordinary it is.

If you can see this,

Can you see what I'm saying?

Yes.

How extraordinary.

We will agree to suffer for the sake of desire when unseen in those same moments of that identification,

When all said and done,

It is the nature of desire itself that we suffer from.

We will agree to suffer for the sake of desire.

What does that mean?

I desire you to like me.

I want you to love me.

So for the sake of that feeling of myself as someone who is lovable,

I will create in you whatever dependency is necessary to support that image,

And I will keep that in place until you do not acknowledge all that I've done and given up to you and for you,

And in that moment,

I'm no longer someone who wants to be loved by you.

Now I'm someone who's going to demand that you give me the respect I'm due for all the sacrifices I've made when you made no sacrifices at all of a conscious kind,

Certainly not in any codependent relationship.

So I suffer for the sake of a desire that promises me a time to come,

That tempts me quite literally with some eventual triumph that allows me to put the pain of my past away.

And it does that by bringing me back into the very past that the pain lives in,

Where I relive the memories of this consciousness so that the consciousness that takes me back into that time of trouble can then have the next thing it promises me,

Or the next pain to try to escape,

And it never ends.

Do you see this?

How am I doing on time?

Where's my time?

26 minutes.

I got to get cooking here.

Do you see this?

Bring up the second key lesson,

Kate.

It summarizes what we've done so far.

Read along with me.

Identifying with the thought or image of any pleasure is the seed of some form of conflict whose suffering is about to flower.

Identifying with the thought or image of any pleasure to come is the seed of some form of conflict whose suffering is about to flower.

Here I am.

I'll give you an example.

I'm identified with the fact that I don't want to be home today.

I'm,

I want to go do something.

I know what I'll do.

I'll go shop.

I'll go eat.

I'll go buy myself something.

I'll turn on the tube.

And before too long,

I get there.

They don't have what I want.

The service isn't good enough.

The food wasn't right.

Somehow or other,

The very thing that promised pleasure,

The conditions don't allow it to fulfill as imagined.

And the next thing I know,

I'm in pain again.

And I don't see that without the initial thought of that pleasure to come,

There would be no flowering of this suffering that then does what?

It gives me the next seed.

It plants the next self,

The next identity by which I'll be free if I can just get through whatever that moment is.

Everybody still tracking with me?

It's important.

This is,

This is what Christ meant when he said,

The blind shall lead the blind and both fall in a pit and unconscious nature produces what seems to be a conscious choice,

A nature asleep to itself,

Thinks it wakes up to the source of its suffering and then can see what it needs to do with someone or something later so that it will be free of the pain.

We think that asking for contentment or security for whatever we imagine will bring an end to this feeling of being so estranged is going to do it.

But we've yet to see as did Buddha.

This is the point for any true master.

How did the wise man become wise?

He stopped answering his own questions.

He stopped believing that the answer to his pain was to listen to pain,

To dress itself up as a pleasure downstream.

And that when you consume it or get to that circumstance,

You'll be free,

But we haven't seen it not deeply enough that in this world,

It is,

I'll slow this down.

I,

I myself can tell you for years have fought with this idea,

But it is indisputable,

It doesn't matter what you want from this world,

What you want from this world will bring you what you don't want,

They are tied together.

And when I say what you want from this world,

For those of you that think you might be spiritual people,

Where do you think it is that you get the idea of what it'll mean when you can finally have some deep meditation,

Most people don't know this,

Buddha spent years with a couple of great masters of the time of certain profound practices of meditation,

All leading to the abnegation of the self,

Because that,

That did form a certain basis for his work,

But in the end,

He refused it because it was not real time,

Were there moments,

Great hints of yes,

Glimpses of another kind of being,

But not the entrance into the being,

Just some form of effort,

Some ambition,

Some desire to return to the,

The,

The Mokshi,

To return to that freedom,

I hear it all the time from students,

I saw this,

I did that,

It was great,

How do I get back there,

You can't get back there,

There's nowhere for you to get back to,

Because there's no you outside of the holiness of the moment,

But we don't see the holiness of the moment,

Because we live from a nature that's forever creating a holiness,

A wholeness to come,

So we haven't seen at least not deeply enough that in this world,

We can't ask for what we want without getting what we don't want,

Let alone,

And this is very important,

And I'm going to run out of time,

But it's okay,

I've got five more talks,

You,

Not only can't I give myself in this world what I want without getting what I don't want,

But in,

In the same moment that that desire appears,

That desire is the creation of time,

Because desire is always connected to becoming,

A time when,

So the moment that desire appears,

Appears in that consciousness,

A separation in itself,

What I am and don't want to be,

What I will get,

And then how I will be,

When,

And it is in that,

That,

In the,

In the,

In the hell of time,

In the hell of psychological time,

Which is division,

It's space,

It's distance,

And the ungodliness at that level of psychological time,

We live in a world,

We have to deal with psychological time,

Don't misunderstand me,

Not throwing stuff out here,

We're just looking at the absolute limitation that we don't see,

Because when I imagine when I'm finally free of this terrible problem I've got,

You don't know what's going on with me,

Oh man,

If you only knew,

If only I could get there and get this over with,

Then that's all a lie,

It's actually creating the pain that drives the next desire that keeps you under the thumb of a nature that's in time and forever trying to escape itself,

Which it can't do,

This is the great truth,

Solving the mystery of myself requires understanding the nature of time,

The nature of desire,

And how we are identified without knowing it,

With that movement,

So what does all of this mean,

For those of us who want to understand a little more deeply,

And I pray that you're one of those people,

Like for Buddha,

For Christ,

The embodiment of truth,

For those of us that want some of this living light,

What does it mean,

Let's bring up the last key lesson,

Kate,

Read along with me,

The end of seeking begins with being willing to see that desire cannot bring an end to itself,

The end of seeking begins with being willing to see that desire cannot bring an end to itself,

I don't do the good I would,

I do the evil I would not,

The evil I would not is this addiction I have to thinking about what you did to me,

The evil I would do not is this constant powerful draw that I have to try to figure out how I can get through this moment or get rid of that past,

That's the evil I would not,

And how do I know it's the evil I would not,

Because whenever I am taken into that world,

That consciousness creates,

I am a captive of it,

And the more I suffer in that world of the evil I would not,

The more I imagine a way to escape it,

Whereas the good I would has nothing to do with what I imagine is good,

The good I would takes place when at last I see with great clarity that the only reason God helped me that I do the evil I would not,

That I hurt myself,

That I hurt others,

The only reason I do it is because in that moment,

Whatever it might be that's coming down,

I look at it,

Something in me sees it as a threat,

Sees it as,

Oh,

What does that mean?

Where's this going to go?

What happens if this,

And in every last one of those moments that thought measures what it sees compared to what it wanted,

Then it has to create a new set of circumstances,

A new desire to identify with,

And the next circle of that self that never comes to an end of its useless suffering.

It begins with being willing to see that desire can't bring an end to itself.

God,

Who am I without thinking about the things that make me seem real to myself,

Without wanting to revisit these images and icons that I'm so dependent on?

Because if anything shakes the ground of any of these icons,

Practical,

Physical,

Religious,

Anything shakes the ground,

All of a sudden I'm shaky,

And the shakier I get,

The more images I have to turn to,

To help me escape what I believe is something that's going to happen to me,

When nothing real can happen to who you are,

You're part of God's life itself,

And God does never step on his own toes,

So here I am.

If I'm understanding,

Like sell all and follow me,

I get it,

What do I have to sell,

A future that doesn't exist apart from what I want from it,

And the sense of self connected to it,

What's going to happen,

You will,

If you persist with your spiritual work,

And God willing,

Whether I'm in a body or not,

This work will go on,

It's an existential threat.

That's why men and women eventually run from the truth,

Why everybody had something else to do when Christ said,

Follow me,

Why nobody wanted anything to do other than ask more questions about the noble truth,

Why I would rather come up with another desire to understand desire than to see the nature of desire itself,

Because the existential threat is that without a me to think about me,

Who am I,

Without a me that I don't want to be or not quite content with,

But a time will come when I'm finally holy and whole,

What am I going to do with my life,

What's going to fill it,

But one must come to this,

Not because I say so,

I'm nothing,

Believe me when I tell you that,

I don't want you to ever believe a word I say,

And don't make out of me as the world has done,

Don't make out of me something,

When I'm not here,

Don't make out of me something,

Make yourself understand everything that you're intended to learn in the moment that's given to you to see the truth of it,

What's left without this body of want to not want,

Without this divided mind caught in a,

In a trap of time that it creates,

I'm going to go much deeper into that.

It's such an important topic what's left.

And this is where it becomes on one hand,

At one point in your work with God,

As my witness,

It becomes so effortless,

It becomes so clear and clarity becomes your strength,

Not trying to find something to be strong with or about,

But the very fact of seeing what I'm describing to you as true,

Gives you the strength to begin a process of this reversal that I spoke of at the beginning,

Coming to a stop,

Sitting under the Bodhi tree,

Sitting at the foot of Christ,

Not like Martha busy,

But Mary anointing his feet,

Meaning entering into that life,

Not as an act of devotion,

But a requirement,

Not a dedication or a discipline,

But an action born out of discovery where there's no choice left to the true aspirant,

Other than bit by bit to start realizing that what's needed in this moment is not another desire.

What's needed is a new kind of will.

For us,

As we are,

Desire is will.

That's what we call will,

Is desire.

But if we had real will,

For instance,

I will to no longer be an impatient person.

I desire to be a kind man or a kind woman.

That desire goes right out the window.

The minute someone sets themselves up in some way against me,

And please don't think for a moment that you being able to explain or justify or hate yourself for doing the evil you would not do.

Please don't think for a moment that that's the same as real will.

That's the proof you have no will.

If you set yourself against yourself,

Judging yourself is not an act of will.

It is the opposite of the desire that suddenly proved itself to be empty.

Therefore,

I must judge myself to prove that I did love or I am kind proves nothing of the kind,

A new will.

Where is this new will?

Where,

Where is this new will to be found?

Give me a second.

This new will,

This new necessity that I will speak of at great length is found in the light that reveals to us the truth of ourselves.

That's where the new will is.

The new light,

Call it what you will,

The Christ,

The divine,

The Buddha nature.

The new will is in that living light.

Because by it,

As Paul said,

We see through a glass darkly,

Even though we don't see it clearly,

We can see the futility,

At least that our mind can help us recognize how I'm still suffering.

I've got a thousand different things,

A thousand places.

I've been a thousand different people and I'm still suffering the same thing.

It's just someplace else under certain circumstances,

Exact same suffering,

Same impatience,

Same anger,

Same doubt,

Same anxiety.

And if one day,

Like Buddha,

Like Christ would have us or any true,

Suddenly,

You know what,

I can't argue this.

I think to myself,

Oh,

All is futile.

No,

All isn't futile.

What's futile is the nature that's trying to find something of itself in a world that it creates out of the content of itself.

It can't escape itself.

I just don't know how to get it across.

Every thought that moves through the mind unattended is this nature escaping the experience of itself created by identifying with the last thought.

Every thought,

It's just like a set of dominoes,

But once the domino falls,

The domino didn't know what moved.

Now it's inert,

But lo and behold,

I don't have to worry about the fact that it's dead because there's still movement and I can see it.

And I can see it.

And my mind follows the trail of thought,

Believing the sensations produced by it is the same as the experience of myself going somewhere.

So this new light,

The truth that sets us free,

Begins with this new kind of self knowledge that I can speak to you about,

But until you embrace it and we can only embrace it,

Some of us are different.

Some of us start with our mind intellectually.

Some of us can feel it emotionally.

We start with the heart.

Some of us even have a capacity to sense it with the body.

But until the body,

Mind,

And heart are unified in this understanding,

There can be no clarity,

Let alone the action that comes out of it,

Because the whole of us has to act.

The holiness in us has to act,

Not some self,

Some surreptitious identity,

But the whole of us have to act.

That's how we come to a stop.

That's how we begin to realize what it takes to achieve this true freedom,

Rebirth.

We can no more awaken ourselves to ourselves than a rose can bloom without sunlight.

And it is this light that I'm describing to you,

But that shows us the darkness we're in.

Surely you've had this moment.

I was speaking with somebody that had my teeth clean.

The dental assistant was asking me some spiritual questions.

I said,

Well,

Have you not had moments where you would give your whole life not to have to go through that?

Oh,

Yeah.

I said,

But have you not seen a year,

A day,

A month,

Whatever,

Down the stream that you wouldn't,

That most important thing in the world?

Because yes,

I have.

Well,

What if that moment's right now?

What if it's always that moment?

What if there is always light in the midst of this darkness,

But we don't know to bring this light forward so that we can see the nature of this desire,

This darkened nature,

So that we can get in that moment to transcend that nature on the spot,

Die to it,

Sell it on them in the very moment,

Because as this grows in us,

This understanding,

Then we catch a glimpse of what is called God's mercy.

That we are never not with the abiding patience of this light that lives in the darkness that knows nothing about it.

You go on for days talking about it,

But you and I must escape the days,

D-A-Z-E of what comes over us when some condition threatens who we think we are or what we have to prove one more time.

So it is in this incredible revelation,

Bring up the last key lesson one more time,

If you can,

Kate,

And we'll close on it.

The end of seeking begins with being willing to see that desire cannot bring an end to itself.

Sorry,

Katie,

I know I throw you a little curve there.

The end of seeking begins with being willing to see that desire can't bring an end to itself.

Next time you get ready to go get something,

Do something,

Create dependency that you don't know you're doing.

Make a little note,

You know,

I'm going to go do this one more time because I believe if I'm there,

If I get this,

If I do that,

I'll be free.

And write it down,

Make a mental note,

If nothing else,

So that when a day,

A week,

A month later,

You see what has come back to you,

The karma,

The true meaning of karma,

The justice,

The rebalancing that shows you the moment you tried to balance yourself,

You created imbalance.

Then you have grounds,

Real grounds,

To begin this process of coming to the stop of sitting under the Bodhi tree,

Of sitting at the feet of this living life,

Of this Christ,

Of this truth that sets you free.

Then you have a chance,

But not until then.

Not until then.

You have to see this for yourself.